GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2003-05-21 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end for copying conditions. Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. For older news, see the file ONEWS You can narrow news to the specific version by calling `view-emacs-news' with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n. Temporary note: +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated. --- means no change in the manuals is called for. When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or --- so we will look at it and add it to the manual. * Installation Changes in Emacs 22.1 --- ** Emacs now supports new configure options `--program-prefix', `--program-suffix' and `--program-transform-name' that affect the names of installed programs. --- ** Emacs can now be built without sound support. --- ** You can build Emacs with Gtk+ widgets by specifying `--with-x-toolkit=gtk' when you run configure. This requires Gtk+ 2.0 or newer. This port provides a way to display multilingual text in menus (with some caveats). --- ** The `emacsserver' program has been removed, replaced with Lisp code. --- ** By default, Emacs now uses a setgid helper program to update game scores. The directory ${localstatedir}/games/emacs is the normal place for game scores to be stored. You can control this with the configure option `--with-game-dir'. The specific user that Emacs uses to own the game scores is controlled by `--with-game-user'. If access to a game user is not available, then scores will be stored separately in each user's home directory. --- ** Leim is now part of the Emacs distribution. You no longer need to download a separate tarball in order to build Emacs with Leim. +++ ** The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is now part of the distribution. The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual in Info format is built as part of the Emacs build procedure and installed together with the Emacs User Manual. A menu item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy accessible (Help->More Manuals->Emacs Lisp Reference). --- ** The Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp manual is now part of the distribution. This manual is now part of the standard distribution and is installed, together with the Emacs User Manual, into the Info directory. A menu item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy accessible (Help->More Manuals->Introduction to Emacs Lisp). --- ** New translations of the Emacs Tutorial are available in the following languages: Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese (both with simplified and traditional characters), French, and Italian. Type `C-u C-h t' to choose one of them in case your language setup doesn't automatically select the right one. --- ** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available. --- ** Emacs now includes support for loading image libraries on demand. (Currently this feature is only used on MS Windows.) You can configure the supported image types and their associated dynamic libraries by setting the variable `image-library-alist'. --- ** Support for Cygwin was added. --- ** Support for FreeBSD/Alpha has been added. --- ** Support for GNU/Linux systems on S390 machines was added. --- ** Support for MacOS X was added. See the files mac/README and mac/INSTALL for build instructions. --- ** Support for GNU/Linux systems on X86-64 machines was added. --- ** Mac OS 9 port now uses the Carbon API by default. You can also create non-Carbon build by specifying `NonCarbon' as a target. See the files mac/README and mac/INSTALL for build instructions. --- ** Building with -DENABLE_CHECKING does not automatically build with union types any more. Add -DUSE_LISP_UNION_TYPE if you want union types. --- ** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how much pure storage it will approximately need. ** The script etc/emacs-buffer.gdb can be used with gdb to retrieve the contents of buffers from a core dump and save them to files easily, should emacs crash. * Startup Changes in Emacs 22.1 +++ ** New command line option -Q or --quick. This is like using -q --no-site-file, but in addition it also disables the fancy startup screen. +++ ** New command line option -D or --basic-display. Disables the menu-bar, the tool-bar, the scroll-bars, tool tips, and the blinking cursor. +++ ** New command line option -nbc or --no-blinking-cursor disables the blinking cursor on graphical terminals. +++ ** The option --script FILE runs Emacs in batch mode and loads FILE. It is useful for writing Emacs Lisp shell script files, because they can start with this line: #!/usr/bin/emacs --script +++ ** The option --directory DIR now modifies `load-path' immediately. Directories are added to the front of `load-path' in the order they appear on the command line. For example, with this command line: emacs -batch -L .. -L /tmp --eval "(require 'foo)" Emacs looks for library `foo' in the parent directory, then in /tmp, then in the other directories in `load-path'. (-L is short for --directory.) +++ ** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to --no-window-system. The old one still works, but is deprecated. +++ ** The -f option, used from the command line to call a function, now reads arguments for the function interactively if it is an interactively callable function. +++ ** When you specify a frame size with --geometry, the size applies to all frames you create. A position specified with --geometry only affects the initial frame. +++ ** Emacs can now be invoked in full-screen mode on a windowed display. When Emacs is invoked on a window system, the new command-line options `--fullwidth', `--fullheight', and `--fullscreen' produce a frame whose width, height, or both width and height take up the entire screen size. (For now, this does not work with some window managers.) +++ ** Emacs now displays a splash screen by default even if command-line arguments were given. The new command-line option --no-splash disables the splash screen; see also the variable `inhibit-startup-message' (which is also aliased as `inhibit-splash-screen'). +++ ** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'. When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally displays a buffer menu. This option turns the buffer menu off. +++ ** Init file changes You can now put the init files .emacs and .emacs_SHELL under ~/.emacs.d or directly under ~. Emacs will find them in either place. +++ ** Emacs now reads the standard abbrevs file ~/.abbrev_defs automatically at startup, if it exists. When Emacs offers to save modified buffers, it saves the abbrevs too if they have changed. It can do this either silently or asking for confirmation first, according to the value of `save-abbrevs'. * Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 22.1 +++ ** M-g is now a prefix key. M-g g and M-g M-g run goto-line. M-g n and M-g M-n run next-error (like C-x `). M-g p and M-g M-p run previous-error. +++ ** C-u M-g M-g switches to the most recent previous buffer, and goes to the specified line in that buffer. When goto-line starts to execute, if there's a number in the buffer at point then it acts as the default argument for the minibuffer. +++ ** The old bindings C-M-delete and C-M-backspace have been deleted, since there are situations where one or the other will shut down the operating system or your X server. +++ ** line-move-ignore-invisible now defaults to t. +++ ** When the undo information of the current command gets really large (beyond the value of `undo-outer-limit'), Emacs discards it and warns you about it. +++ ** `apply-macro-to-region-lines' now operates on all lines that begin in the region, rather than on all complete lines in the region. +++ ** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... cycles through the mark ring. Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump. +++ ** The info-search bindings on C-h C-f, C-h C-k and C-h C-i have been moved to C-h F, C-h K and C-h S. +++ ** In incremental search, C-w is changed. M-%, C-M-w and C-M-y are special. See below under "incremental search changes". --- ** C-x C-f RET, typing nothing in the minibuffer, is no longer a special case. Since the default input is the current directory, this has the effect of specifying the current directory. Normally that means to visit the directory with Dired. +++ ** The completion commands TAB, SPC and ? in the minibuffer apply only to the text before point. If there is text in the buffer after point, it remains unchanged. +++ ** M-o now is the prefix key for setting text properties; M-o M-o requests refontification. +++ ** You can now follow links by clicking Mouse-1 on the link. See below for more details. +++ ** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded by whitespace. This means you can now use them as shell wildcards too. If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'. * Editing Changes in Emacs 22.1 +++ ** The max size of buffers and integers has been doubled. On 32bit machines, it is now 256M (i.e. 268435455). +++ ** M-g is now a prefix key. M-g g and M-g M-g run goto-line. M-g n and M-g M-n run next-error (like C-x `). M-g p and M-g M-p run previous-error. +++ ** C-u M-g M-g switches to the most recent previous buffer, and goes to the specified line in that buffer. When goto-line starts to execute, if there's a number in the buffer at point then it acts as the default argument for the minibuffer. +++ ** The old bindings C-M-delete and C-M-backspace have been deleted, since there are situations where one or the other will shut down the operating system or your X server. +++ ** line-move-ignore-invisible now defaults to t. +++ ** When the undo information of the current command gets really large (beyond the value of `undo-outer-limit'), Emacs discards it and warns you about it. +++ ** `apply-macro-to-region-lines' now operates on all lines that begin in the region, rather than on all complete lines in the region. +++ ** You can now switch buffers in a cyclic order with C-x C-left and (prev-buffer) and C-x C-right (next-buffer). C-x left and C-x right can be used as well. +++ ** `undo-only' does an undo which does not redo any previous undo. +++ ** M-SPC (just-one-space) when given a numeric argument N converts whitespace around point to N spaces. --- ** New commands to operate on pairs of open and close characters: `insert-pair', `delete-pair', `raise-sexp'. --- ** New command `kill-whole-line' kills an entire line at once. By default, it is bound to C-S-. +++ ** Yanking text now discards certain text properties that can be inconvenient when you did not expect them. The variable `yank-excluded-properties' specifies which ones. Insertion of register contents and rectangles also discards these properties. +++ ** The default values of paragraph-start and indent-line-function have been changed to reflect those used in Text mode rather than those used in Indented-Text mode. +++ ** M-x setenv now expands environment variable references. Substrings of the form `$foo' and `${foo}' in the specified new value now refer to the value of environment variable foo. To include a `$' in the value, use `$$'. +++ ** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and `same-window'. +++ ** The default for the paper size (variable ps-paper-type) is taken from the locale. ** The command `list-faces-display' now accepts a prefix arg. When passed, the function prompts for a regular expression and lists only faces matching this regexp. ** Mark command changes: +++ *** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... cycles through the mark ring. Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump. +++ *** Marking commands extend the region when invoked multiple times. If you type C-M-SPC (mark-sexp), M-@ (mark-word), M-h (mark-paragraph), or C-M-h (mark-defun) repeatedly, the marked region extends each time, so you can mark the next two sexps with M-C-SPC M-C-SPC, for example. This feature also works for mark-end-of-sentence, if you bind that to a key. It also extends the region when the mark is active in Transient Mark mode, regardless of the last command. To start a new region with one of marking commands in Transient Mark mode, you can deactivate the active region with C-g, or set the new mark with C-SPC. +++ *** M-h (mark-paragraph) now accepts a prefix arg. With positive arg, M-h marks the current and the following paragraphs; if the arg is negative, it marks the current and the preceding paragraphs. +++ *** Some commands do something special in Transient Mark mode when the mark is active--for instance, they limit their operation to the region. Even if you don't normally use Transient Mark mode, you might want to get this behavior from a particular command. There are two ways you can enable Transient Mark mode and activate the mark, for one command only. One method is to type C-SPC C-SPC; this enables Transient Mark mode and sets the mark at point. The other method is to type C-u C-x C-x. This enables Transient Mark mode temporarily but does not alter the mark or the region. After these commands, Transient Mark mode remains enabled until you deactivate the mark. That typically happens when you type a command that alters the buffer, but you can also deactivate the mark by typing C-g. +++ *** Movement commands `beginning-of-buffer', `end-of-buffer', `beginning-of-defun', `end-of-defun' do not set the mark if the mark is already active in Transient Mark mode. ** Help command changes: +++ *** Changes in C-h bindings: C-h e displays the *Messages* buffer. C-h followed by a control character is used for displaying files that do not change: C-h C-f displays the FAQ. C-h C-e displays the PROBLEMS file. The info-search bindings on C-h C-f, C-h C-k and C-h C-i have been moved to C-h F, C-h K and C-h S. C-h c, C-h k, C-h w, and C-h f now handle remapped interactive commands. - C-h c and C-h k report the actual command (after possible remapping) run by the key sequence. - C-h w and C-h f on a command which has been remapped now report the command it is remapped to, and the keys which can be used to run that command. For example, if C-k is bound to kill-line, and kill-line is remapped to new-kill-line, these commands now report: - C-h c and C-h k C-k reports: C-k runs the command new-kill-line - C-h w and C-h f kill-line reports: kill-line is remapped to new-kill-line which is on C-k, - C-h w and C-h f new-kill-line reports: new-kill-line is on C-k --- *** Help commands `describe-function' and `describe-key' now show function arguments in lowercase italics on displays that support it. To change the default, customize face `help-argument-name' or redefine the function `help-default-arg-highlight'. +++ *** C-h v and C-h f commands now include a hyperlink to the C source for variables and functions defined in C (if the C source is available). +++ *** Help mode now only makes hyperlinks for faces when the face name is preceded or followed by the word `face'. It no longer makes hyperlinks for variables without variable documentation, unless preceded by one of the words `variable' or `option'. It now makes hyperlinks to Info anchors (or nodes) if the anchor (or node) name is enclosed in single quotes and preceded by `info anchor' or `Info anchor' (in addition to earlier `info node' and `Info node'). +++ *** The new command `describe-char' (C-u C-x =) pops up a buffer with description various information about a character, including its encodings and syntax, its text properties, how to input, overlays, and widgets at point. You can get more information about some of them, by clicking on mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET. +++ *** The command `list-text-properties-at' has been deleted because C-u C-x = gives the same information and more. +++ *** New command `display-local-help' displays any local help at point in the echo area. It is bound to `C-h .'. It normally displays the same string that would be displayed on mouse-over using the `help-echo' property, but, in certain cases, it can display a more keyboard oriented alternative. +++ *** New user option `help-at-pt-display-when-idle' allows to automatically show the help provided by `display-local-help' on point-over, after suitable idle time. The amount of idle time is determined by the user option `help-at-pt-timer-delay' and defaults to one second. This feature is turned off by default. +++ *** The apropos commands now accept a list of words to match. When more than one word is specified, at least two of those words must be present for an item to match. Regular expression matching is still available. +++ *** The new option `apropos-sort-by-scores' causes the matching items to be sorted according to their score. The score for an item is a number calculated to indicate how well the item matches the words or regular expression that you entered to the apropos command. The best match is listed first, and the calculated score is shown for each matching item. ** Incremental Search changes: +++ *** Vertical scrolling is now possible within incremental search. To enable this feature, customize the new user option `isearch-allow-scroll'. User written commands which satisfy stringent constraints can be marked as "scrolling commands". See the Emacs manual for details. +++ *** C-w in incremental search now grabs either a character or a word, making the decision in a heuristic way. This new job is done by the command `isearch-yank-word-or-char'. To restore the old behavior, bind C-w to `isearch-yank-word' in `isearch-mode-map'. +++ *** C-y in incremental search now grabs the next line if point is already at the end of a line. +++ *** C-M-w deletes and C-M-y grabs a character in isearch mode. Another method to grab a character is to enter the minibuffer by `M-e' and to type `C-f' at the end of the search string in the minibuffer. +++ *** M-% typed in isearch mode invokes `query-replace' or `query-replace-regexp' (depending on search mode) with the current search string used as the string to replace. +++ *** Isearch no longer adds `isearch-resume' commands to the command history by default. To enable this feature, customize the new user option `isearch-resume-in-command-history'. ** Replace command changes: --- *** New user option `query-replace-skip-read-only': when non-nil, `query-replace' and related functions simply ignore a match if part of it has a read-only property. +++ *** When used interactively, the commands `query-replace-regexp' and `replace-regexp' allow \,expr to be used in a replacement string, where expr is an arbitrary Lisp expression evaluated at replacement time. In many cases, this will be more convenient than using `query-replace-regexp-eval'. `\#' in a replacement string now refers to the count of replacements already made by the replacement command. All regular expression replacement commands now allow `\?' in the replacement string to specify a position where the replacement string can be edited for each replacement. +++ *** query-replace uses isearch lazy highlighting when the new user option `query-replace-lazy-highlight' is non-nil. --- *** The current match in query-replace is highlighted in new face `query-replace' which by default inherits from isearch face. ** File operation changes: +++ *** Unquoted `$' in file names do not signal an error any more when the corresponding environment variable does not exist. Instead, the `$ENVVAR' text is left as is, so that `$$' quoting is only rarely needed. +++ *** In processing a local variables list, Emacs strips the prefix and suffix are from every line before processing all the lines. +++ *** find-file-read-only visits multiple files in read-only mode, when the file name contains wildcard characters. +++ *** find-alternate-file replaces the current file with multiple files, when the file name contains wildcard characters. +++ *** Auto Compression mode is now enabled by default. --- *** C-x C-f RET, typing nothing in the minibuffer, is no longer a special case. Since the default input is the current directory, this has the effect of specifying the current directory. Normally that means to visit the directory with Dired. +++ *** When you are root, and you visit a file whose modes specify read-only, the Emacs buffer is now read-only too. Type C-x C-q if you want to make the buffer writable. (As root, you can in fact alter the file.) +++ *** C-x s (save-some-buffers) now offers an option `d' to diff a buffer against its file, so you can see what changes you would be saving. +++ *** The commands copy-file, rename-file, make-symbolic-link and add-name-to-file, when given a directory as the "new name" argument, convert it to a file name by merging in the within-directory part of the existing file's name. (This is the same convention that shell commands cp, mv, and ln follow.) Thus, M-x copy-file RET ~/foo RET /tmp RET copies ~/foo to /tmp/foo. --- *** When used interactively, `format-write-file' now asks for confirmation before overwriting an existing file, unless a prefix argument is supplied. This behavior is analogous to `write-file'. --- *** The variable `auto-save-file-name-transforms' now has a third element that controls whether or not the function `make-auto-save-file-name' will attempt to construct a unique auto-save name (e.g. for remote files). +++ *** If the user visits a file larger than `large-file-warning-threshold', Emacs asks for confirmation. +++ *** require-final-newline now has two new possible values: `visit' means add a newline (as an undoable change) if it's needed when visiting the file. `visit-save' means add a newline (as an undoable change) if it's needed when visiting the file, and also add a newline if it's needed when saving the file. +++ *** The new option mode-require-final-newline controls how certain major modes enable require-final-newline. Any major mode that's designed for a kind of file that should normally end in a newline sets require-final-newline based on mode-require-final-newline. So you can customize mode-require-final-newline to control what these modes do. ** Minibuffer changes: +++ *** There's a new face `minibuffer-prompt'. Emacs adds this face to the list of text properties stored in the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', which is used to display the prompt string. --- *** Enhanced visual feedback in `*Completions*' buffer. Completions lists use faces to highlight what all completions have in common and where they begin to differ. The common prefix shared by all possible completions uses the face `completions-common-part', while the first character that isn't the same uses the face `completions-first-difference'. By default, `completions-common-part' inherits from `default', and `completions-first-difference' inherits from `bold'. The idea of `completions-common-part' is that you can use it to make the common parts less visible than normal, so that the rest of the differing parts is, by contrast, slightly highlighted. +++ *** File-name completion can now ignore specified directories. If an element of the list in `completion-ignored-extensions' ends in a slash `/', it indicates a subdirectory that should be ignored when completing file names. Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions' which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion candidate is a directory. +++ *** The completion commands TAB, SPC and ? in the minibuffer apply only to the text before point. If there is text in the buffer after point, it remains unchanged. +++ *** New user option `history-delete-duplicates'. If set to t when adding a new history element, all previous identical elements are deleted. ** Redisplay changes: +++ *** The mode line position information now comes before the major mode. When the file is maintained under version control, that information appears between the position information and the major mode. +++ *** New face `escape-glyph' highlights control characters and escape glyphs. +++ *** Non-breaking space and hyphens are now prefixed with an escape character, unless the new user variable `show-nonbreak-escape' is set to nil. +++ *** The parameters of automatic hscrolling can now be customized. The variable `hscroll-margin' determines how many columns away from the window edge point is allowed to get before automatic hscrolling will horizontally scroll the window. The default value is 5. The variable `hscroll-step' determines how many columns automatic hscrolling scrolls the window when point gets too close to the window edge. If its value is zero, the default, Emacs scrolls the window so as to center point. If its value is an integer, it says how many columns to scroll. If the value is a floating-point number, it gives the fraction of the window's width to scroll the window. The variable `automatic-hscrolling' was renamed to `auto-hscroll-mode'. The old name is still available as an alias. --- *** Moving or scrolling through images (and other lines) taller that the window now works sensibly, by automatically adjusting the window's vscroll property. +++ *** The new face `mode-line-inactive' is used to display the mode line of non-selected windows. The `mode-line' face is now used to display the mode line of the currently selected window. The new variable `mode-line-in-non-selected-windows' controls whether the `mode-line-inactive' face is used. +++ *** You can now customize the use of window fringes. To control this for all frames, use M-x fringe-mode or the Show/Hide submenu of the top-level Options menu, or customize the `fringe-mode' variable. To control this for a specific frame, use the command M-x set-fringe-style. +++ *** Angle icons in the fringes can indicate the buffer boundaries. In addition, up and down arrow bitmaps in the fringe indicate which ways the window can be scrolled. This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable `indicate-buffer-boundaries' to a non-nil value. The default value of this variable is found in `default-indicate-buffer-boundaries'. If value is `left' or `right', both angle and arrow bitmaps are displayed in the left or right fringe, resp. The value can also be an alist which specifies the presence and position of each bitmap individually. For example, ((top . left) (t . right)) places the top angle bitmap in left fringe, the bottom angle bitmap in right fringe, and both arrow bitmaps in right fringe. To show just the angle bitmaps in the left fringe, but no arrow bitmaps, use ((top . left) (bottom . left)). +++ *** On window systems, lines which are exactly as wide as the window (not counting the final newline character) are no longer broken into two lines on the display (with just the newline on the second line). Instead, the newline now "overflows" into the right fringe, and the cursor will be displayed in the fringe when positioned on that newline. The new user option 'overflow-newline-into-fringe' can be set to nil to revert to the old behavior of continuing such lines. +++ *** When a window has display margin areas, the fringes are now displayed between the margins and the buffer's text area, rather than outside those margins. +++ *** A window can now have individual fringe and scroll-bar settings, in addition to the individual display margin settings. Such individual settings are now preserved when windows are split horizontally or vertically, a saved window configuration is restored, or when the frame is resized. ** Cursor display changes: +++ *** On X, MS Windows, and Mac OS, the blinking cursor's "off" state is now controlled by the variable `blink-cursor-alist'. +++ *** The X resource cursorBlink can be used to turn off cursor blinking. +++ *** Emacs can produce an underscore-like (horizontal bar) cursor. The underscore cursor is set by putting `(cursor-type . hbar)' in default-frame-alist. It supports variable heights, like the `bar' cursor does. +++ *** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any) of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor appears in. +++ *** The variable `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' can now be set to any of the recognized cursor types. ** New faces: +++ *** `mode-line-highlight' is the standard face indicating mouse sensitive elements on mode-line (and header-line) like `highlight' face on text areas. +++ *** `shadow' face defines the appearance of the "shadowed" text, i.e. the text which should be less noticeable than the surrounding text. This can be achieved by using shades of grey in contrast with either black or white default foreground color. This generic shadow face allows customization of the appearance of shadowed text in one place, so package-specific faces can inherit from it. ** Font-Lock changes: +++ *** M-o now is the prefix key for setting text properties; M-o M-o requests refontification. +++ *** All modes now support using M-x font-lock-mode to toggle fontification, even those such as Occur, Info, and comint-derived modes that do their own fontification in a special way. The variable `Info-fontify' is no longer applicable; to disable fontification in Info, remove `turn-on-font-lock' from `Info-mode-hook'. +++ *** font-lock-lines-before specifies a number of lines before the current line that should be refontified when you change the buffer. The default value is 1. +++ *** font-lock: in modes like C and Lisp where the fontification assumes that an open-paren in column 0 is always outside of any string or comment, font-lock now highlights any such open-paren-in-column-zero in bold-red if it is inside a string or a comment, to indicate that it can cause trouble with fontification and/or indentation. +++ *** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'. +++ *** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-comment-delimiter-face'. +++ *** Easy to overlook single character negation can now be font-locked. You can use the new variable `font-lock-negation-char-face' and the face of the same name to customize this. Currently the cc-modes, sh-script-mode, cperl-mode and make-mode support this. --- *** The default settings for JIT stealth lock parameters are changed. The default value for the user option jit-lock-stealth-time is now 16 instead of 3, and the default value of jit-lock-stealth-nice is now 0.5 instead of 0.125. The new defaults should lower the CPU usage when Emacs is fontifying in the background. --- *** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'. If this variable is non-nil, its value should be the amount of Emacs idle time in seconds to wait before starting fontification. For example, if you set `jit-lock-defer-time' to 0.25, fontification will only happen after 0.25s of idle time. --- *** contextual refontification is now separate from stealth fontification. jit-lock-defer-contextually is renamed jit-lock-contextually and jit-lock-context-time determines the delay after which contextual refontification takes place. ** Menu support: --- *** A menu item "Show/Hide" was added to the top-level menu "Options". This menu allows you to turn various display features on and off (such as the fringes, the tool bar, the speedbar, and the menu bar itself). You can also move the vertical scroll bar to either side here or turn it off completely. There is also a menu-item to toggle displaying of current date and time, current line and column number in the mode-line. --- *** Speedbar has moved from the "Tools" top level menu to "Show/Hide". --- *** You can exit dialog windows and menus by typing C-g. --- *** The menu item "Open File..." has been split into two items, "New File..." and "Open File...". "Open File..." now opens only existing files. This is to support existing GUI file selection dialogs better. +++ *** The file selection dialog for Gtk+, Mac, W32 and Motif/Lesstif can be disabled by customizing the variable `use-file-dialog'. --- *** The pop up menus for Lucid now stay up if you do a fast click and can be navigated with the arrow keys (like Gtk+, Mac and W32). +++ *** The Lucid menus can display multilingual text in your locale. You have to explicitly specify a fontSet resource for this to work, for example `-xrm "Emacs*fontSet: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*,*"'. --- *** Dialogs for Lucid/Athena and Lesstif/Motif now pops down when pressing ESC, like they do for Gtk+, Mac and W32. +++ *** For Gtk+ version 2.4, you can make Emacs use the old file dialog by setting the variable `x-use-old-gtk-file-dialog' to t. Default is to use the new dialog. ** Mouse changes: +++ *** New display feature: focus follows the mouse from one Emacs window to another, even within a frame. If you set the variable mouse-autoselect-window to non-nil value, moving the mouse to a different Emacs window will select that window (minibuffer window can be selected only when it is active). The default is nil, so that this feature is not enabled. +++ *** On X, when the window manager requires that you click on a frame to select it (give it focus), the selected window and cursor position normally changes according to the mouse click position. If you set the variable x-mouse-click-focus-ignore-position to t, the selected window and cursor position do not change when you click on a frame to give it focus. +++ *** You can now follow links by clicking Mouse-1 on the link. Traditionally, Emacs uses a Mouse-1 click to set point and a Mouse-2 click to follow a link, whereas most other applications use a Mouse-1 click for both purposes, depending on whether you click outside or inside a link. Now the behavior of a Mouse-1 click has been changed to match this context-sentitive dual behavior. (If you prefer the old behavior, set the user option `mouse-1-click-follows-link' to nil.) Depending on the current mode, a Mouse-2 click in Emacs can do much more than just follow a link, so the new Mouse-1 behavior is only activated for modes which explicitly mark a clickable text as a "link" (see the new function `mouse-on-link-p' for details). The Lisp packages that are included in release 22.1 have been adapted to do this, but external packages may not yet support this. However, there is no risk in using such packages, as the worst thing that could happen is that you get the original Mouse-1 behavior when you click on a link, which typically means that you set point where you click. If you want to get the original Mouse-1 action also inside a link, you just need to press the Mouse-1 button a little longer than a normal click (i.e. press and hold the Mouse-1 button for half a second before you release it). Dragging the Mouse-1 inside a link still performs the original drag-mouse-1 action, typically copy the text. You can customize the new Mouse-1 behavior via the new user options `mouse-1-click-follows-link' and `mouse-1-click-in-non-selected-windows'. +++ *** Emacs normally highlights mouse sensitive text whenever the mouse is over the text. By setting the new variable `mouse-highlight', you can optionally enable mouse highlighting only after you move the mouse, so that highlighting disappears when you press a key. You can also disable mouse highlighting. +++ *** You can now customize if selecting a region by dragging the mouse shall not copy the selected text to the kill-ring by setting the new variable mouse-drag-copy-region to nil. --- *** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window (rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'. --- *** Emacs ignores mouse-2 clicks while the mouse wheel is being moved. People tend to push the mouse wheel (which counts as a mouse-2 click) unintentionally while turning the wheel, so these clicks are now ignored. You can customize this with the mouse-wheel-click-event and mouse-wheel-inhibit-click-time variables. +++ *** Under X, mouse-wheel-mode is turned on by default. ** Mule changes: --- *** Language environment and various default coding systems are setup more correctly according to the current locale name. If the locale name doesn't specify a charset, the default is what glibc defines. This change can result in using the different coding systems as default in some locale (e.g. vi_VN). +++ *** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on your current locale settings if you are not using a window system. This can mean that the META key doesn't work but generates non-ASCII characters instead, depending on how the terminal (or terminal emulator) works. Use `set-keyboard-coding-system' (or customize keyboard-coding-system) if you prefer META to work (the old default) or if the locale doesn't describe the character set actually generated by the keyboard. See Info node `Single-Byte Character Support'. +++ *** The new command `revert-buffer-with-coding-system' (C-x RET r) revisits the current file using a coding system that you specify. +++ *** New command `recode-region' decodes the region again by a specified coding system. +++ *** The new command `recode-file-name' changes the encoding of the name of a file. --- *** New command `ucs-insert' inserts a character specified by its unicode. +++ *** The new command `set-file-name-coding-system' (C-x RET F) sets coding system for encoding and decoding file names. A new menu item (Options->Mule->Set Coding Systems->For File Name) invokes this command. +++ *** New command quail-show-key shows what key (or key sequence) to type in the current input method to input a character at point. +++ *** Limited support for character `unification' has been added. Emacs now knows how to translate between different representations of the same characters in various Emacs charsets according to standard Unicode mappings. This applies mainly to characters in the ISO 8859 sets plus some other 8-bit sets, but can be extended. For instance, translation works amongst the Emacs ...-iso8859-... charsets and the mule-unicode-... ones. By default this translation happens automatically on encoding. Self-inserting characters are translated to make the input conformant with the encoding of the buffer in which it's being used, where possible. You can force a more complete unification with the user option unify-8859-on-decoding-mode. That maps all the Latin-N character sets into Unicode characters (from the latin-iso8859-1 and mule-unicode-0100-24ff charsets) on decoding. Note that this mode will often effectively clobber data with an iso-2022 encoding. --- *** There is support for decoding Greek and Cyrillic characters into either Unicode (the mule-unicode charsets) or the iso-8859 charsets, when possible. The latter are more space-efficient. This is controlled by user option utf-fragment-on-decoding. --- *** New language environments: French, Ukrainian, Tajik, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, UTF-8, Windows-1255, Welsh, Latin-6, Latin-7, Lithuanian, Latvian, Swedish, Slovenian, Croatian, Georgian, Italian, Russian, Malayalam, Tamil, Russian, Chinese-EUC-TW. (Set up automatically according to the locale.) --- *** New input methods: latin-alt-postfix, latin-postfix, latin-prefix, ukrainian-computer, belarusian, bulgarian-bds, russian-computer, vietnamese-telex, lithuanian-numeric, lithuanian-keyboard, latvian-keyboard, welsh, georgian, rfc1345, ucs, sgml, bulgarian-phonetic, dutch, slovenian, croatian, malayalam-inscript, tamil-inscript. --- *** New input method chinese-sisheng for inputting Chinese Pinyin characters. --- *** Improved Thai support. A new minor mode `thai-word-mode' (which is automatically activated if you select Thai as a language environment) changes key bindings of most word-oriented commands to versions which recognize Thai words. Affected commands are M-f (forward-word) M-b (backward-word) M-d (kill-word) M-DEL (backward-kill-word) M-t (transpose-words) M-q (fill-paragraph) --- *** Indian support has been updated. The in-is13194 coding system is now Unicode-based. CDAC fonts are assumed. There is a framework for supporting various Indian scripts, but currently only Devanagari, Malayalam and Tamil are supported. --- *** A UTF-7 coding system is available in the library `utf-7'. --- *** The utf-8/16 coding systems have been enhanced. By default, untranslatable utf-8 sequences are simply composed into single quasi-characters. User option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' (it is turned on by default) arranges to translate many utf-8 CJK character sequences into real Emacs characters in a similar way to the Mule-UCS system. As this loads a fairly big data on demand, people who are not interested in CJK characters may want to customize it to nil. You can augment/amend the CJK translation via hash tables `ucs-mule-cjk-to-unicode' and `ucs-unicode-to-mule-cjk'. The utf-8 coding system now also encodes characters from most of Emacs's one-dimensional internal charsets, specifically the ISO-8859 ones. The utf-16 coding system is affected similarly. --- *** A new coding system `euc-tw' has been added for traditional Chinese in CNS encoding; it accepts both Big 5 and CNS as input; on saving, Big 5 is then converted to CNS. --- *** Many new coding systems are available by loading the `code-pages' library. These include complete versions of most of those in codepage.el, based on Unicode mappings. `codepage-setup' is now obsolete and is used only in the MS-DOS port of Emacs. windows-1252 and windows-1251 are preloaded since the former is so common and the latter is used by GNU locales. --- *** New variable `utf-translate-cjk-unicode-range' controls which Unicode characters to translate in `utf-translate-cjk-mode'. --- *** iso-10646-1 (`Unicode') fonts can be used to display any range of characters encodable by the utf-8 coding system. Just specify the fontset appropriately. ** Customize changes: +++ *** The commands M-x customize-face and M-x customize-face-other-window now look at the character after point. If a face or faces are specified for that character, the commands by default customize those faces. --- *** The face-customization widget has been reworked to be less confusing. In particular, when you enable a face attribute using the corresponding check-box, there's no longer a redundant `*' option in value selection for that attribute; the values you can choose are only those which make sense for the attribute. When an attribute is de-selected by unchecking its check-box, then the (now ignored, but still present temporarily in case you re-select the attribute) value is hidden. +++ *** When you set or reset a variable's value in a Customize buffer, the previous value becomes the "backup value" of the variable. You can go back to that backup value by selecting "Use Backup Value" under the "[State]" button. ** Buffer Menu changes: +++ *** New command `Buffer-menu-toggle-files-only' toggles display of file buffers only in the Buffer Menu. It is bound to `T' in Buffer Menu mode. +++ *** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin with a space, when those buffers are visiting files. Normally buffers whose names begin with space are omitted. --- *** The new options `buffers-menu-show-directories' and `buffers-menu-show-status' let you control how buffers are displayed in the menu dropped down when you click "Buffers" from the menu bar. `buffers-menu-show-directories' controls whether the menu displays leading directories as part of the file name visited by the buffer. If its value is `unless-uniquify', the default, directories are shown unless uniquify-buffer-name-style' is non-nil. The value of nil and t turn the display of directories off and on, respectively. `buffers-menu-show-status' controls whether the Buffers menu includes the modified and read-only status of the buffers. By default it is t, and the status is shown. Setting these variables directly does not take effect until next time the Buffers menu is regenerated. ** Dired mode: --- *** New faces dired-header, dired-mark, dired-marked, dired-flagged, dired-ignored, dired-directory, dired-symlink, dired-warning introduced for Dired mode instead of font-lock faces. +++ *** New Dired command `dired-compare-directories' marks files with different file attributes in two dired buffers. +++ *** New Dired command `dired-do-touch' (bound to T) changes timestamps of marked files with the value entered in the minibuffer. +++ *** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded by whitespace. This means you can now use them as shell wildcards too. If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'. +++ *** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name into the kill ring. With a zero prefix arg, copies absolute file names. +++ *** In Dired-x, Omitting files is now a minor mode, dired-omit-mode. The mode toggling command is bound to M-o. A new command dired-mark-omitted, bound to * O, marks omitted files. The variable dired-omit-files-p is obsoleted, use the mode toggling function instead. +++ *** The variables dired-free-space-program and dired-free-space-args have been renamed to directory-free-space-program and directory-free-space-args, and they now apply whenever Emacs puts a directory listing into a buffer. ** Comint changes: --- *** The comint prompt can now be made read-only, using the new user option `comint-prompt-read-only'. This is not enabled by default, except in IELM buffers. The read-only status of IELM prompts can be controlled with the new user option `ielm-prompt-read-only', which overrides `comint-prompt-read-only'. The new commands `comint-kill-whole-line' and `comint-kill-region' support editing comint buffers with read-only prompts. `comint-kill-whole-line' is like `kill-whole-line', but ignores both read-only and field properties. Hence, it always kill entire lines, including any prompts. `comint-kill-region' is like `kill-region', except that it ignores read-only properties, if it is safe to do so. This means that if any part of a prompt is deleted, then the entire prompt must be deleted and that all prompts must stay at the beginning of a line. If this is not the case, then `comint-kill-region' behaves just like `kill-region' if read-only are involved: it copies the text to the kill-ring, but does not delete it. +++ *** The new command `comint-insert-previous-argument' in comint-derived modes (shell-mode etc) inserts arguments from previous command lines, like bash's `ESC .' binding. It is bound by default to `C-c .', but otherwise behaves quite similarly to the bash version. +++ *** `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' has been renamed `comint-use-prompt-regexp'. The old name has been kept as an alias, but declared obsolete. ** M-x Compile changes: --- *** M-x compile has become more robust and reliable Quite a few more kinds of messages are recognized. Messages that are recognized as warnings or informational come in orange or green, instead of red. Informational messages are by default skipped with `next-error' (controlled by `compilation-skip-threshold'). Location data is collected on the fly as the *compilation* buffer changes. This means you could modify messages to make them point to different files. This also means you can not go to locations of messages you may have deleted. The variable `compilation-error-regexp-alist' has now become customizable. If you had added your own regexps to this, you'll probably need to include a leading `^', otherwise they'll match anywhere on a line. There is now also a `compilation-mode-font-lock-keywords' and it nicely handles all the checks that configure outputs and -o options so you see at a glance where you are. The new file etc/compilation.txt gives examples of each type of message. +++ *** New user option `compilation-environment'. This option allows you to specify environment variables for inferior compilation processes without affecting the environment that all subprocesses inherit. +++ *** New options `next-error-highlight' and `next-error-highlight-no-select' specify the method of highlighting of the corresponding source line in new face `next-error'. +++ *** A new minor mode `next-error-follow-minor-mode' can be used in compilation-mode, grep-mode, occur-mode, and diff-mode (i.e. all the modes that can use `next-error'). In this mode, cursor motion in the buffer causes automatic display in another window of the corresponding matches, compilation errors, etc. This minor mode can be toggled with C-c C-f. +++ *** When the left fringe is displayed, an arrow points to current message in the compilation buffer. +++ *** The new variable `compilation-context-lines' controls lines of leading context before the current message. If nil and the left fringe is displayed, it doesn't scroll the compilation output window. If there is no left fringe, no arrow is displayed and a value of nil means display the message at the top of the window. ** Occur mode changes: +++ *** In the *Occur* buffer, `o' switches to it in another window, and C-o displays the current line's occurrence in another window without switching to it. +++ *** You can now use next-error (C-x `) and previous-error to advance to the next/previous matching line found by M-x occur. +++ *** The new command `multi-occur' is just like `occur', except it can search multiple buffers. There is also a new command `multi-occur-by-filename-regexp' which allows you to specify the buffers to search by their filename. Internally, Occur mode has been rewritten, and now uses font-lock, among other changes. ** Grep changes: +++ *** Grep has been decoupled from compilation mode setup. There's a new separate package grep.el, with its own submenu and customization group. --- *** M-x grep provides highlighting support. Hits are fontified in green, and hits in binary files in orange. Grep buffers can be saved and automatically revisited. +++ *** `grep-find' is now also available under the name `find-grep' where people knowing `find-grep-dired' would probably expect it. --- *** The new variables `grep-window-height', `grep-auto-highlight', and `grep-scroll-output' override the corresponding compilation mode settings, for grep commands only. +++ *** New option `grep-highlight-matches' highlightes matches in *grep* buffer. It uses a special feature of some grep programs which accept --color option to output markers around matches. When going to the next match with `next-error' the exact match is highlighted in the source buffer. Otherwise, if `grep-highlight-matches' is nil, the whole source line is highlighted. +++ *** New key bindings in grep output window: SPC and DEL scrolls window up and down. C-n and C-p moves to next and previous match in the grep window. RET jumps to the source line of the current match. `n' and `p' shows next and previous match in other window, but does not switch buffer. `{' and `}' jumps to the previous or next file in the grep output. TAB also jumps to the next file. +++ *** M-x grep now tries to avoid appending `/dev/null' to the command line by using GNU grep `-H' option instead. M-x grep automatically detects whether this is possible or not the first time it is invoked. When `-H' is used, the grep command line supplied by the user is passed unchanged to the system to execute, which allows more complicated command lines to be used than was possible before. ** X Windows Support: +++ *** Emacs now supports drag and drop for X. Dropping a file on a window opens it, dropping text inserts the text. Dropping a file on a dired buffer copies or moves the file to that directory. +++ *** Under X11, it is possible to swap Alt and Meta (and Super and Hyper). The new variables `x-alt-keysym', `x-hyper-keysym', `x-meta-keysym', and `x-super-keysym' can be used to choose which keysyms Emacs should use for the modifiers. For example, the following two lines swap Meta and Alt: (setq x-alt-keysym 'meta) (setq x-meta-keysym 'alt) +++ *** The X resource useXIM can be used to turn off use of XIM, which can speed up Emacs with slow networking to the X server. If the configure option `--without-xim' was used to turn off use of XIM by default, the X resource useXIM can be used to turn it on. --- *** The new variable `x-select-request-type' controls how Emacs requests X selection. The default value is nil, which means that Emacs requests X selection with types COMPOUND_TEXT and UTF8_STRING, and use the more appropriately result. --- *** The scrollbar under LessTif or Motif has a smoother drag-scrolling. On the other hand, the size of the thumb does not represent the actual amount of text shown any more (only a crude approximation of it). ** Xterm support: --- *** Emacs now responds to mouse-clicks on the mode-line, header-line and display margin, when run in an xterm. --- *** Improved key bindings support when running in an xterm. When emacs is running in an xterm more key bindings are available. The following should work: {C,S,C-S,A}-{right,left,up,down,prior,next,delete,insert,F1-12}. These key bindings work on xterm from X.org 6.8, they might not work on some older versions of xterm, or on some proprietary versions. ** Character terminal color support changes: +++ *** The new command-line option --color=MODE lets you specify a standard mode for a tty color support. It is meant to be used on character terminals whose capabilities are not set correctly in the terminal database, or with terminal emulators which support colors, but don't set the TERM environment variable to a name of a color-capable terminal. "emacs --color" uses the same color commands as GNU `ls' when invoked with "ls --color", so if your terminal can support colors in "ls --color", it will support "emacs --color" as well. See the user manual for the possible values of the MODE parameter. --- *** Emacs now supports several character terminals which provide more than 8 colors. For example, for `xterm', 16-color, 88-color, and 256-color modes are supported. Emacs automatically notes at startup the extended number of colors, and defines the appropriate entries for all of these colors. +++ *** Emacs now uses the full range of available colors for the default faces when running on a color terminal, including 16-, 88-, and 256-color xterms. This means that when you run "emacs -nw" on an 88-color or 256-color xterm, you will see essentially the same face colors as on X. --- *** There's a new support for colors on `rxvt' terminal emulator. * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 22.1 +++ ** Filesets are collections of files. You can define a fileset in various ways, such as based on a directory tree or based on program files that include other program files. Once you have defined a fileset, you can perform various operations on all the files in it, such as visiting them or searching and replacing in them. +++ ** Calc is now part of the Emacs distribution. Calc is an advanced desk calculator and mathematical tool written in Emacs Lisp. Its documentation is in a separate manual; within Emacs, type "C-h i m calc RET" to read that manual. A reference card is available in `etc/calccard.tex' and `etc/calccard.ps'. --- ** The new package ibuffer provides a powerful, completely customizable replacement for buff-menu.el. --- ** Ido mode is now part of the Emacs distribution. The ido (interactively do) package is an extension of the iswitchb package to do interactive opening of files and directories in addition to interactive buffer switching. Ido is a superset of iswitchb (with a few exceptions), so don't enable both packages. +++ ** Image files are normally visited in Image mode, which lets you toggle between viewing the image and viewing the text using C-c C-c. --- ** CUA mode is now part of the Emacs distribution. The new cua package provides CUA-like keybindings using C-x for cut (kill), C-c for copy, C-v for paste (yank), and C-z for undo. With cua, the region can be set and extended using shifted movement keys (like pc-selection-mode) and typed text replaces the active region (like delete-selection-mode). Do not enable these modes with cua-mode. Customize the variable `cua-mode' to enable cua. In addition, cua provides unified rectangle support with visible rectangle highlighting: Use C-return to start a rectangle, extend it using the movement commands (or mouse-3), and cut or copy it using C-x or C-c (using C-w and M-w also works). Use M-o and M-c to `open' or `close' the rectangle, use M-b or M-f, to fill it with blanks or another character, use M-u or M-l to upcase or downcase the rectangle, use M-i to increment the numbers in the rectangle, use M-n to fill the rectangle with a numeric sequence (such as 10 20 30...), use M-r to replace a regexp in the rectangle, and use M-' or M-/ to restrict command on the rectangle to a subset of the rows. See the commentary in cua-base.el for more rectangle commands. Cua also provides unified support for registers: Use a numeric prefix argument between 0 and 9, i.e. M-0 .. M-9, for C-x, C-c, and C-v to cut or copy into register 0-9, or paste from register 0-9. The last text deleted (not killed) is automatically stored in register 0. This includes text deleted by typing text. Finally, cua provides a global mark which is set using S-C-space. When the global mark is active, any text which is cut or copied is automatically inserted at the global mark position. See the commentary in cua-base.el for more global mark related commands. The features of cua also works with the standard emacs bindings for kill, copy, yank, and undo. If you want to use cua mode, but don't want the C-x, C-c, C-v, and C-z bindings, you can customize the `cua-enable-cua-keys' variable. Note: This version of cua mode is not backwards compatible with older versions of cua.el and cua-mode.el. To ensure proper operation, you must remove older versions of cua.el or cua-mode.el as well as the loading and customization of those packages from the .emacs file. +++ ** The new package dns-mode.el add syntax highlight of DNS master files. The key binding C-c C-s (`dns-mode-soa-increment-serial') can be used to increment the SOA serial. --- ** The new global minor mode `file-name-shadow-mode' modifies the way filenames being entered by the user in the minibuffer are displayed, so that it's clear when part of the entered filename will be ignored due to emacs' filename parsing rules. The ignored portion can be made dim, invisible, or otherwise less visually noticable. The display method can be displayed by customizing the variable `file-name-shadow-properties'. +++ ** The new package flymake.el does on-the-fly syntax checking of program source files. See the Flymake's Info manual for more details. +++ ** The new keypad setup package provides several common bindings for the numeric keypad which is available on most keyboards. The numeric keypad typically has the digits 0 to 9, a decimal point, keys marked +, -, /, and *, an Enter key, and a NumLock toggle key. The keypad package only controls the use of the digit and decimal keys. By customizing the variables `keypad-setup', `keypad-shifted-setup', `keypad-numlock-setup', and `keypad-numlock-shifted-setup', or by using the function `keypad-setup', you can rebind all digit keys and the decimal key of the keypad in one step for each of the four possible combinations of the Shift key state (not pressed/pressed) and the NumLock toggle state (off/on). The choices for the keypad keys in each of the above states are: `Plain numeric keypad' where the keys generates plain digits, `Numeric keypad with decimal key' where the character produced by the decimal key can be customized individually (for internationalization), `Numeric Prefix Arg' where the keypad keys produce numeric prefix args for emacs editing commands, `Cursor keys' and `Shifted Cursor keys' where the keys work like (shifted) arrow keys, home/end, etc., and `Unspecified/User-defined' where the keypad keys (kp-0, kp-1, etc.) are left unspecified and can be bound individually through the global or local keymaps. +++ ** The new kmacro package provides a simpler user interface to emacs' keyboard macro facilities. Basically, it uses two function keys (default F3 and F4) like this: F3 starts a macro, F4 ends the macro, and pressing F4 again executes the last macro. While defining the macro, F3 inserts a counter value which automatically increments every time the macro is executed. There is now a keyboard macro ring which stores the most recently defined macros. The C-x C-k sequence is now a prefix for the kmacro keymap which defines bindings for moving through the keyboard macro ring, C-x C-k C-p and C-x C-k C-n, editing the last macro C-x C-k C-e, manipulating the macro counter and format via C-x C-k C-c, C-x C-k C-a, and C-x C-k C-f. See the commentary in kmacro.el for more commands. The normal macro bindings C-x (, C-x ), and C-x e now interfaces to the keyboard macro ring. The C-x e command now automatically terminates the current macro before calling it, if used while defining a macro. In addition, when ending or calling a macro with C-x e, the macro can be repeated immediately by typing just the `e'. You can customize this behavior via the variable kmacro-call-repeat-key and kmacro-call-repeat-with-arg. Keyboard macros can now be debugged and edited interactively. C-x C-k SPC steps through the last keyboard macro one key sequence at a time, prompting for the actions to take. --- ** New minor mode, Visible mode, toggles invisibility in the current buffer. When enabled, it makes all invisible text visible. When disabled, it restores the previous value of `buffer-invisibility-spec'. +++ ** The wdired.el package allows you to use normal editing commands on Dired buffers to change filenames, permissions, etc... +++ ** The new package longlines.el provides a minor mode for editing text files composed of long lines, based on the `use-hard-newlines' mechanism. The long lines are broken up by inserting soft newlines, which are automatically removed when saving the file to disk or copying into the kill ring, clipboard, etc. By default, Longlines mode inserts soft newlines automatically during editing, a behavior referred to as "soft word wrap" in other text editors. This is similar to Refill mode, but more reliable. To turn the word wrap feature off, set `longlines-auto-wrap' to nil. +++ ** The printing package is now part of the Emacs distribution. If you enable the printing package by including (require 'printing) in the .emacs file, the normal Print item on the File menu is replaced with a Print sub-menu which allows you to preview output through ghostview, use ghostscript to print (if you don't have a PostScript printer) or send directly to printer a PostScript code generated by `ps-print' package. Use M-x pr-help for more information. --- ** The minor mode Reveal mode makes text visible on the fly as you move your cursor into hidden regions of the buffer. It should work with any package that uses overlays to hide parts of a buffer, such as outline-minor-mode, hs-minor-mode, hide-ifdef-mode, ... There is also Global Reveal mode which affects all buffers. --- ** The ruler-mode.el library provides a minor mode for displaying an "active" ruler in the header line. You can use the mouse to visually change the `fill-column', `window-margins' and `tab-stop-list' settings. +++ ** SES mode (ses-mode) is a new major mode for creating and editing spreadsheet files. Besides the usual Emacs features (intuitive command letters, undo, cell formulas in Lisp, plaintext files, etc.) it also offers viral immunity and import/export of tab-separated values. +++ ** The new global minor mode `size-indication-mode' (off by default) shows the size of accessible part of the buffer on the mode line. +++ ** The new package table.el implements editable, WYSIWYG, embedded `text tables' in Emacs buffers. It simulates the effect of putting these tables in a special major mode. The package emulates WYSIWYG table editing available in modern word processors. The package also can generate a table source in typesetting and markup languages such as latex and html from the visually laid out text table. +++ ** The thumbs.el package allows you to preview image files as thumbnails and can be invoked from a Dired buffer. +++ ** Tramp is now part of the distribution. This package is similar to Ange-FTP: it allows you to edit remote files. But whereas Ange-FTP uses FTP to access the remote host, Tramp uses a shell connection. The shell connection is always used for filename completion and directory listings and suchlike, but for the actual file transfer, you can choose between the so-called `inline' methods (which transfer the files through the shell connection using base64 or uu encoding) and the `out-of-band' methods (which invoke an external copying program such as `rcp' or `scp' or `rsync' to do the copying). Shell connections can be acquired via `rsh', `ssh', `telnet' and also `su' and `sudo'. Ange-FTP is still supported via the `ftp' method. If you want to disable Tramp you should set (setq tramp-default-method "ftp") --- ** The URL package (which had been part of W3) is now part of Emacs. --- ** `cfengine-mode' is a major mode for editing GNU Cfengine configuration files. +++ ** The new package conf-mode.el handles thousands of configuration files, with varying syntaxes for comments (;, #, //, /* */ or !), assignment (var = value, var : value, var value or keyword var value) and sections ([section] or section { }). Many files under /etc/, or with suffixes like .cf through .config, .properties (Java), .desktop (KDE/Gnome), .ini and many others are recognized. --- ** GDB-Script-mode is used for files like .gdbinit. +++ ** The new python.el package is used to edit Python and Jython programs. --- ** The TCL package tcl-mode.el was replaced by tcl.el. This was actually done in Emacs-21.1, and was not documented. * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 22.1: --- ** Makefile mode has submodes for automake, gmake, makepp and BSD make. The former two couldn't be differentiated before, and the latter two are new. Font-locking is robust now and offers new customizable faces. +++ ** In Outline mode, `hide-body' no longer hides lines at the top of the file that precede the first header line. +++ ** Telnet now prompts you for a port number with C-u M-x telnet. --- ** The terminal emulation code in term.el has been improved; it can run most curses applications now. +++ ** M-x diff uses Diff mode instead of Compilation mode. +++ ** You can now customize `fill-nobreak-predicate' to control where filling can break lines. The value is now normally a list of functions, but it can also be a single function, for compatibility. Emacs provide two predicates, `fill-single-word-nobreak-p' and `fill-french-nobreak-p', for use as the value of `fill-nobreak-predicate'. --- ** M-x view-file and commands that use it now avoid interfering with special modes such as Tar mode. --- ** Commands `winner-redo' and `winner-undo', from winner.el, are now bound to C-c and C-c , respectively. This is an incompatible change. --- ** `global-whitespace-mode' is a new alias for `whitespace-global-mode'. +++ ** M-x compare-windows now can automatically skip non-matching text to resync points in both windows. +++ ** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'. When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry always starts a new record regardless of when the last record is. --- ** PO translation files are decoded according to their MIME headers when Emacs visits them. ** Info mode changes: +++ *** A numeric prefix argument of `info' selects an Info buffer with the number appended to the `*info*' buffer name (e.g. "*info*<2>"). --- *** isearch in Info uses Info-search and searches through multiple nodes. Before leaving the initial Info node isearch fails once with the error message [initial node], and with subsequent C-s/C-r continues through other nodes. When isearch fails for the rest of the manual, it wraps aroung the whole manual to the top/final node. The user option `Info-isearch-search' controls whether to use Info-search for isearch, or the default isearch search function that wraps around the current Info node. *** New search commands: `Info-search-case-sensitively' (bound to S), `Info-search-backward', and `Info-search-next' which repeats the last search without prompting for a new search string. *** New command `Info-history-forward' (bound to r and new toolbar icon) moves forward in history to the node you returned from after using `Info-history-back' (renamed from `Info-last'). *** New command `Info-history' (bound to L) displays a menu of visited nodes. *** New command `Info-toc' (bound to T) creates a node with table of contents from the tree structure of menus of the current Info file. *** New command `info-apropos' searches the indices of the known Info files on your system for a string, and builds a menu of the possible matches. *** New command `Info-copy-current-node-name' (bound to w) copies the current Info node name into the kill ring. With a zero prefix arg, puts the node name inside the `info' function call. --- *** New face `info-xref-visited' distinguishes visited nodes from unvisited and a new option `Info-fontify-visited-nodes' to control this. *** http and ftp links in Info are now operational: they look like cross references and following them calls `browse-url'. +++ *** Info now hides node names in menus and cross references by default. If you prefer the old behavior, you can set the new user option `Info-hide-note-references' to nil. --- *** Images in Info pages are supported. Info pages show embedded images, in Emacs frames with image support. Info documentation that includes images, processed with makeinfo version 4.7 or newer, compiles to Info pages with embedded images. +++ *** The default value for `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' is now nil. --- *** `Info-index' offers completion. ** Lisp mode changes: --- *** Lisp mode now uses `font-lock-doc-face' for doc strings. +++ *** C-u C-M-q in Emacs Lisp mode pretty-prints the list after point. *** New features in evaluation commands +++ **** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) called on defface reinitializes the face to the value specified in the defface expression. +++ **** Typing C-x C-e twice prints the value of the integer result in additional formats (octal, hexadecimal, character) specified by the new function `eval-expression-print-format'. The same function also defines the result format for `eval-expression' (M-:), `eval-print-last-sexp' (C-j) and some edebug evaluation functions. +++ ** CC mode changes. *** Font lock support. CC Mode now provides font lock support for all its languages. This supersedes the font lock patterns that have been in the core font lock package for C, C++, Java and Objective-C. Like indentation, font locking is done in a uniform way across all languages (except the new AWK mode - see below). That means that the new font locking will be different from the old patterns in various details for most languages. The main goal of the font locking in CC Mode is accuracy, to provide a dependable aid in recognizing the various constructs. Some, like strings and comments, are easy to recognize while others like declarations and types can be very tricky. CC Mode can go to great lengths to recognize declarations and casts correctly, especially when the types aren't recognized by standard patterns. This is a fairly demanding analysis which can be slow on older hardware, and it can therefore be disabled by choosing a lower decoration level with the variable font-lock-maximum-decoration. Note that the most demanding font lock level has been tuned with lazy fontification in mind, i.e. there should be a support mode that waits with the fontification until the text is actually shown (e.g. Just-in-time Lock mode, which is the default, or Lazy Lock mode). Fontifying a file with several thousand lines in one go can take the better part of a minute. **** The (c|c++|objc|java|idl|pike)-font-lock-extra-types variables are now used by CC Mode to recognize identifiers that are certain to be types. (They are also used in cases that aren't related to font locking.) At the maximum decoration level, types are often recognized properly anyway, so these variables should be fairly restrictive and not contain patterns for uncertain types. **** Support for documentation comments. There is a "plugin" system to fontify documentation comments like Javadoc and the markup within them. It's independent of the host language, so it's possible to e.g. turn on Javadoc font locking in C buffers. See the variable c-doc-comment-style for details. Currently two kinds of doc comment styles are recognized: Suns Javadoc and Autodoc which is used in Pike. This is by no means a complete list of the most common tools; if your doc comment extractor of choice is missing then please drop a note to bug-cc-mode@gnu.org. **** Better handling of C++ templates. As a side effect of the more accurate font locking, C++ templates are now handled much better. The angle brackets that delimit them are given parenthesis syntax so that they can be navigated like other parens. This also improves indentation of templates, although there still is work to be done in that area. E.g. it's required that multiline template clauses are written in full and then refontified to be recognized, and the indentation of nested templates is a bit odd and not as configurable as it ought to be. **** Improved handling of Objective-C and CORBA IDL. Especially the support for Objective-C and IDL has gotten an overhaul. The special "@" declarations in Objective-C are handled correctly. All the keywords used in CORBA IDL, PSDL, and CIDL are recognized and handled correctly, also wrt indentation. *** Support for the AWK language. Support for the AWK language has been introduced. The implementation is based around GNU AWK version 3.1, but it should work pretty well with any AWK. As yet, not all features of CC Mode have been adapted for AWK. Here is a summary: **** Indentation Engine The CC Mode indentation engine fully supports AWK mode. AWK mode handles code formatted in the conventional AWK fashion: `{'s which start actions, user-defined functions, or compound statements are placed on the same line as the associated construct; the matching `}'s are normally placed under the start of the respective pattern, function definition, or structured statement. The predefined indentation functions haven't yet been adapted for AWK mode, though some of them may work serendipitously. There shouldn't be any problems writing custom indentation functions for AWK mode. The command C-c C-q (c-indent-defun) hasn't yet been adapted for AWK, though in practice it works properly nearly all the time. Should it fail, explicitly set the region around the function (using C-u C-SPC: C-M-h probably won't work either) then do C-M-\ (indent-region). **** Font Locking There is a single level of font locking in AWK mode, rather than the three distinct levels the other modes have. There are several idiosyncrasies in AWK mode's font-locking due to the peculiarities of the AWK language itself. **** Comment Commands M-; (indent-for-comment) works fine. None of the other CC Mode comment formatting commands have yet been adapted for AWK mode. **** Movement Commands Most of the movement commands work in AWK mode. The most important exceptions are M-a (c-beginning-of-statement) and M-e (c-end-of-statement) which haven't yet been adapted. The notion of "defun" has been augmented to include AWK pattern-action pairs. C-M-a (c-awk-beginning-of-defun) and C-M-e (c-awk-end-of-defun) recognise these pattern-action pairs, as well as user defined functions. **** Auto-newline Insertion and Clean-ups Auto-newline insertion hasn't yet been adapted for AWK. Some of the clean-ups can actually convert good AWK code into syntactically invalid code. These features are best disabled in AWK buffers. *** New syntactic symbols in IDL mode. The top level constructs "module" and "composition" (from CIDL) are now handled like "namespace" in C++: They are given syntactic symbols module-open, module-close, inmodule, composition-open, composition-close, and incomposition. *** New functions to do hungry delete without enabling hungry delete mode. The functions `c-hungry-backspace' and `c-hungry-delete-forward' can be bound to keys to get this feature without toggling a mode. *** Better control over `require-final-newline'. The variable `c-require-final-newline' specifies which of the modes implemented by CC mode should insert final newlines. Its value is a list of modes, and only those modes should do it. By default the list includes C, C++ and Objective-C modes. Whichever modes are in this list will set `require-final-newline' based on `mode-require-final-newline'. *** Format change for syntactic context elements. The elements in the syntactic context returned by `c-guess-basic-syntax' and stored in `c-syntactic-context' has been changed somewhat to allow attaching more information. They are now lists instead of single cons cells. E.g. a line that previously had the syntactic analysis ((inclass . 11) (topmost-intro . 13)) is now analysed as ((inclass 11) (topmost-intro 13)) In some cases there are more than one position given for a syntactic symbol. This change might affect code that call `c-guess-basic-syntax' directly, and custom lineup functions if they use `c-syntactic-context'. However, the argument given to lineup functions is still a single cons cell with nil or an integer in the cdr. *** API changes for derived modes. There have been extensive changes "under the hood" which can affect derived mode writers. Some of these changes are likely to cause incompatibilities with existing derived modes, but on the other hand care has now been taken to make it possible to extend and modify CC Mode with less risk of such problems in the future. **** New language variable system. See the comment blurb near the top of cc-langs.el. **** New initialization functions. The initialization procedure has been split up into more functions to give better control: `c-basic-common-init', `c-font-lock-init', and `c-init-language-vars'. *** Changes in analysis of nested syntactic constructs. The syntactic analysis engine has better handling of cases where several syntactic constructs appear nested on the same line. They are now handled as if each construct started on a line of its own. This means that CC Mode now indents some cases differently, and although it's more consistent there might be cases where the old way gave results that's more to one's liking. So if you find a situation where you think that the indentation has become worse, please report it to bug-cc-mode@gnu.org. **** New syntactic symbol substatement-label. This symbol is used when a label is inserted between a statement and its substatement. E.g: if (x) x_is_true: do_stuff(); *** Better handling of multiline macros. **** Syntactic indentation inside macros. The contents of multiline #define's are now analyzed and indented syntactically just like other code. This can be disabled by the new variable `c-syntactic-indentation-in-macros'. A new syntactic symbol `cpp-define-intro' has been added to control the initial indentation inside `#define's. **** New lineup function `c-lineup-cpp-define'. Now used by default to line up macro continuation lines. The behavior of this function closely mimics the indentation one gets if the macro is indented while the line continuation backslashes are temporarily removed. If syntactic indentation in macros is turned off, it works much line `c-lineup-dont-change', which was used earlier, but handles empty lines within the macro better. **** Automatically inserted newlines continues the macro if used within one. This applies to the newlines inserted by the auto-newline mode, and to `c-context-line-break' and `c-context-open-line'. **** Better alignment of line continuation backslashes. `c-backslash-region' tries to adapt to surrounding backslashes. New variable `c-backslash-max-column' which put a limit on how far out backslashes can be moved. **** Automatic alignment of line continuation backslashes. This is controlled by the new variable `c-auto-align-backslashes'. It affects `c-context-line-break', `c-context-open-line' and newlines inserted in Auto-Newline mode. **** Line indentation works better inside macros. Regardless whether syntactic indentation and syntactic indentation inside macros are enabled or not, line indentation now ignores the line continuation backslashes. This is most noticeable when syntactic indentation is turned off and there are empty lines (save for the backslash) in the macro. *** indent-for-comment is more customizable. The behavior of M-; (indent-for-comment) is now configurable through the variable `c-indent-comment-alist'. The indentation behavior based on the preceding code on the line, e.g. to get two spaces after #else and #endif but indentation to `comment-column' in most other cases (something which was hardcoded earlier). *** New function `c-context-open-line'. It's the open-line equivalent of `c-context-line-break'. *** New lineup functions **** `c-lineup-string-cont' This lineup function lines up a continued string under the one it continues. E.g: result = prefix + "A message " "string."; <- c-lineup-string-cont **** `c-lineup-cascaded-calls' Lines up series of calls separated by "->" or ".". **** `c-lineup-knr-region-comment' Gives (what most people think is) better indentation of comments in the "K&R region" between the function header and its body. **** `c-lineup-gcc-asm-reg' Provides better indentation inside asm blocks. **** `c-lineup-argcont' Lines up continued function arguments after the preceding comma. *** Better caching of the syntactic context. CC Mode caches the positions of the opening parentheses (of any kind) of the lists surrounding the point. Those positions are used in many places as anchor points for various searches. The cache is now improved so that it can be reused to a large extent when the point is moved. The less it moves, the less needs to be recalculated. The effect is that CC Mode should be fast most of the time even when opening parens are hung (i.e. aren't in column zero). It's typically only the first time after the point is moved far down in a complex file that it'll take noticeable time to find out the syntactic context. *** Statements are recognized in a more robust way. Statements are recognized most of the time even when they occur in an "invalid" context, e.g. in a function argument. In practice that can happen when macros are involved. *** Improved the way `c-indent-exp' chooses the block to indent. It now indents the block for the closest sexp following the point whose closing paren ends on a different line. This means that the point doesn't have to be immediately before the block to indent. Also, only the block and the closing line is indented; the current line is left untouched. *** Added toggle for syntactic indentation. The function `c-toggle-syntactic-indentation' can be used to toggle syntactic indentation. --- ** Perl mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'. --- ** The old Octave mode bindings C-c f and C-c i have been changed to C-c C-f and C-c C-i. The C-c C-i subcommands now have duplicate bindings on control characters--thus, C-c C-i C-b is the same as C-c C-i b, and so on. ** Fortran mode changes: --- *** Fortran mode does more font-locking by default. Use level 3 highlighting for the old default. +++ *** Fortran mode has a new variable `fortran-directive-re'. Adapt this to match the format of any compiler directives you use. Lines that match are never indented, and are given distinctive font-locking. +++ *** F90 mode and Fortran mode have new navigation commands `f90-end-of-block', `f90-beginning-of-block', `f90-next-block', `f90-previous-block', `fortran-end-of-block', `fortran-beginning-of-block'. --- *** F90 mode and Fortran mode have support for `hs-minor-mode' (hideshow). It cannot deal with every code format, but ought to handle a sizeable majority. --- *** The new function `f90-backslash-not-special' can be used to change the syntax of backslashes in F90 buffers. --- ** Prolog mode has a new variable `prolog-font-lock-keywords' to support use of font-lock. ** HTML/SGML changes: --- *** Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding systems for HTML/XML files automatically. +++ *** SGML mode has indentation and supports XML syntax. The new variable `sgml-xml-mode' tells SGML mode to use XML syntax. When this option is enabled, SGML tags are inserted in XML style, i.e., there is always a closing tag. By default, its setting is inferred on a buffer-by-buffer basis from the file name or buffer contents. +++ *** `xml-mode' is now an alias for `sgml-mode', which has XML support. ** TeX modes: +++ *** C-c C-c prompts for a command to run, and tries to offer a good default. +++ *** The user option `tex-start-options-string' has been replaced by two new user options: `tex-start-options', which should hold command-line options to feed to TeX, and `tex-start-commands' which should hold TeX commands to use at startup. --- *** verbatim environments are now highlighted in courier by font-lock and super/sub-scripts are made into super/sub-scripts. +++ *** New major mode Doctex mode, for *.dtx files. ** BibTeX mode: *** The new command `bibtex-url' browses a URL for the BibTeX entry at point (bound to C-c C-l and mouse-2, RET on clickable fields). *** The new command `bibtex-entry-update' (bound to C-c C-u) updates an existing BibTeX entry. *** New `bibtex-entry-format' option `required-fields', enabled by default. *** `bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries' can take values `plain', `crossref', and `entry-class' which control the sorting scheme used for BibTeX entries. `bibtex-sort-entry-class' controls the sorting scheme `entry-class'. TAB completion for reference keys and automatic detection of duplicates does not require anymore that `bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries' is non-nil. *** If the new variable `bibtex-parse-keys-fast' is non-nil, use fast but simplified algorithm for parsing BibTeX keys. *** If the new variable `bibtex-autoadd-commas' is non-nil, automatically add missing commas at end of BibTeX fields. *** The new variable `bibtex-autofill-types' contains a list of entry types for which fields are filled automatically (if possible). *** The new command `bibtex-complete' completes word fragment before point according to context (bound to M-tab). *** The new commands `bibtex-find-entry' and `bibtex-find-crossref' locate entries and crossref'd entries (bound to C-c C-s and C-c C-x). Crossref fields are clickable (bound to mouse-2, RET). *** In BibTeX mode the command `fill-paragraph' (M-q) fills individual fields of a BibTeX entry. *** The new variables `bibtex-files' and `bibtex-file-path' define a set of BibTeX files that are searched for entry keys. *** The new command `bibtex-validate-globally' checks for duplicate keys in multiple BibTeX files. *** The new command `bibtex-copy-summary-as-kill' pushes summary of BibTeX entry to kill ring (bound to C-c C-t). +++ ** In Enriched mode, `set-left-margin' and `set-right-margin' are now by default bound to `C-c [' and `C-c ]' instead of the former `C-c C-l' and `C-c C-r'. ** GUD changes: +++ *** In GUD mode, when talking to GDB, C-x C-a C-j "jumps" the program counter to the specified source line (the one where point is). --- *** GUD mode has its own tool bar for controlling execution of the inferior and other common debugger commands. +++ *** The new package gdb-ui.el provides an enhanced graphical interface to GDB. You can interact with GDB through the GUD buffer in the usual way, but there are also further buffers which control the execution and describe the state of your program. It can separate the input/output of your program from that of GDB and watches expressions in the speedbar. It also uses features of Emacs 21/22 such as the the toolbar, and bitmaps in the fringe to indicate breakpoints. Use M-x gdb to start GDB-UI. *** The variable tooltip-gud-tips-p has been removed. GUD tooltips can now be toggled independently of normal tooltips with the minor mode `gud-tooltip-mode'. +++ *** In graphical mode, with a C program, GUD Tooltips have been extended to display the #define directive associated with an identifier when program is not executing. --- ** GUD mode improvements for jdb: *** Search for source files using jdb classpath and class information. Fast startup since there is no need to scan all source files up front. There is also no need to create and maintain lists of source directories to scan. Look at `gud-jdb-use-classpath' and `gud-jdb-classpath' customization variables documentation. *** Supports the standard breakpoint (gud-break, gud-clear) set/clear operations from java source files under the classpath, stack traversal (gud-up, gud-down), and run until current stack finish (gud-finish). *** Supports new jdb (Java 1.2 and later) in addition to oldjdb (Java 1.1 jdb). *** The previous method of searching for source files has been preserved in case someone still wants/needs to use it. Set `gud-jdb-use-classpath' to nil. Added Customization Variables *** `gud-jdb-command-name'. What command line to use to invoke jdb. *** `gud-jdb-use-classpath'. Allows selection of java source file searching method: set to t for new method, nil to scan `gud-jdb-directories' for java sources (previous method). *** `gud-jdb-directories'. List of directories to scan and search for java classes using the original gud-jdb method (if `gud-jdb-use-classpath' is nil). Minor Improvements *** The STARTTLS wrapper (starttls.el) can now use GNUTLS instead of the OpenSSL based `starttls' tool. For backwards compatibility, it prefers `starttls', but you can toggle `starttls-use-gnutls' to switch to GNUTLS (or simply remove the `starttls' tool). *** Do not allow debugger output history variable to grow without bounds. ** Auto-Revert changes: +++ *** You can now use Auto Revert mode to `tail' a file. If point is at the end of a file buffer before reverting, Auto Revert mode keeps it at the end after reverting. Similarly if point is displayed at the end of a file buffer in any window, it stays at the end of the buffer in that window. This allows to tail a file: just put point at the end of the buffer and it stays there. This rule applies to file buffers. For non-file buffers, the behavior can be mode dependent. If you are sure that the file will only change by growing at the end, then you can tail the file more efficiently by using the new minor mode Auto Revert Tail mode. The function `auto-revert-tail-mode' toggles this mode. +++ *** Auto Revert mode is now more careful to avoid excessive reverts and other potential problems when deciding which non-file buffers to revert. This matters especially if Global Auto Revert mode is enabled and `global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers' is non-nil. Auto Revert mode only reverts a non-file buffer if the buffer has a non-nil `revert-buffer-function' and a non-nil `buffer-stale-function', which decides whether the buffer should be reverted. Currently, this means that auto reverting works for Dired buffers (although this may not work properly on all operating systems) and for the Buffer Menu. +++ *** If the new user option `auto-revert-check-vc-info' is non-nil, Auto Revert mode reliably updates version control info (such as the version control number in the mode line), in all version controlled buffers in which it is active. If the option is nil, the default, then this info only gets updated whenever the buffer gets reverted. --- ** recentf changes. The recent file list is now automatically cleanup when recentf mode is enabled. The new option `recentf-auto-cleanup' controls when to do automatic cleanup. The `recentf-keep' option replaces `recentf-keep-non-readable-files-p' and provides a more general mechanism to customize which file names to keep in the recent list. With the more advanced option: `recentf-filename-handler', you can specify a function that transforms filenames handled by recentf. For example, if set to `file-truename', the same file will not be in the recent list with different symbolic links. To follow naming convention, `recentf-menu-append-commands-flag' replaces the misnamed option `recentf-menu-append-commands-p'. The old name remains available as alias, but has been marked obsolete. +++ ** Desktop package +++ *** Desktop saving is now a minor mode, `desktop-save-mode'. +++ *** The variable `desktop-enable' is obsolete. Customize `desktop-save-mode' to enable desktop saving. --- *** Buffers are saved in the desktop file in the same order as that in the buffer list. +++ *** The desktop package can be customized to restore only some buffers immediately, remaining buffers are restored lazily (when Emacs is idle). +++ *** New commands: - desktop-revert reverts to the last loaded desktop. - desktop-change-dir kills current desktop and loads a new. - desktop-save-in-desktop-dir saves desktop in the directory from which it was loaded. - desktop-lazy-complete runs the desktop load to completion. - desktop-lazy-abort aborts lazy loading of the desktop. --- *** New customizable variables: - desktop-save. Determins whether the desktop should be saved when it is killed. - desktop-file-name-format. Format in which desktop file names should be saved. - desktop-path. List of directories in which to lookup the desktop file. - desktop-locals-to-save. List of local variables to save. - desktop-globals-to-clear. List of global variables that `desktop-clear' will clear. - desktop-clear-preserve-buffers-regexp. Regexp identifying buffers that `desktop-clear' should not delete. - desktop-restore-eager. Number of buffers to restore immediately. Remaining buffers are restored lazily (when Emacs is idle). - desktop-lazy-verbose. Verbose reporting of lazily created buffers. - desktop-lazy-idle-delay. Idle delay before starting to create buffers. +++ *** New command line option --no-desktop --- *** New hooks: - desktop-after-read-hook run after a desktop is loaded. - desktop-no-desktop-file-hook run when no desktop file is found. --- ** The saveplace.el package now filters out unreadable files. When you exit Emacs, the saved positions in visited files no longer include files that aren't readable, e.g. files that don't exist. Customize the new option `save-place-forget-unreadable-files' to nil to get the old behavior. The new options `save-place-save-skipped' and `save-place-skip-check-regexp' allow further fine-tuning of this feature. ** EDiff changes. +++ *** When comparing directories. Typing D brings up a buffer that lists the differences between the contents of directories. Now it is possible to use this buffer to copy the missing files from one directory to another. +++ *** When comparing files or buffers. Typing the = key now offers to perform the word-by-word comparison of the currently highlighted regions in an inferior Ediff session. If you answer 'n' then it reverts to the old behavior and asks the user to select regions for comparison. +++ *** The new command `ediff-backup' compares a file with its most recent backup using `ediff'. If you specify the name of a backup file, `ediff-backup' compares it with the file of which it is a backup. +++ ** Etags changes. *** New regular expressions features **** New syntax for regular expressions, multi-line regular expressions. The syntax --ignore-case-regexp=/regex/ is now undocumented and retained only for backward compatibility. The new equivalent syntax is --regex=/regex/i. More generally, it is --regex=/TAGREGEX/TAGNAME/MODS, where `/TAGNAME' is optional, as usual, and MODS is a string of 0 or more characters among `i' (ignore case), `m' (multi-line) and `s' (single-line). The `m' and `s' modifiers behave as in Perl regular expressions: `m' allows regexps to match more than one line, while `s' (which implies `m') means that `.' matches newlines. The ability to span newlines allows writing of much more powerful regular expressions and rapid prototyping for tagging new languages. **** Regular expressions can use char escape sequences as in GCC. The escaped character sequence \a, \b, \d, \e, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v, respectively, stand for the ASCII characters BEL, BS, DEL, ESC, FF, NL, CR, TAB, VT, **** Regular expressions can be bound to a given language. The syntax --regex={LANGUAGE}REGEX means that REGEX is used to make tags only for files of language LANGUAGE, and ignored otherwise. This is particularly useful when storing regexps in a file. **** Regular expressions can be read from a file. The --regex=@regexfile option means read the regexps from a file, one per line. Lines beginning with space or tab are ignored. *** New language parsing features **** The `::' qualifier triggers C++ parsing in C file. Previously, only the `template' and `class' keywords had this effect. **** The GCC __attribute__ keyword is now recognised and ignored. **** New language HTML. Tags are generated for `title' as well as `h1', `h2', and `h3'. Also, when `name=' is used inside an anchor and whenever `id=' is used. **** In Makefiles, constants are tagged. If you want the old behavior instead, thus avoiding to increase the size of the tags file, use the --no-globals option. **** New language Lua. All functions are tagged. **** In Perl, packages are tags. Subroutine tags are named from their package. You can jump to sub tags as you did before, by the sub name, or additionally by looking for package::sub. **** In Prolog, etags creates tags for rules in addition to predicates. **** New language PHP. Functions, classes and defines are tags. If the --members option is specified to etags, variables are tags also. **** New default keywords for TeX. The new keywords are def, newcommand, renewcommand, newenvironment and renewenvironment. *** Honour #line directives. When Etags parses an input file that contains C preprocessor's #line directives, it creates tags using the file name and line number specified in those directives. This is useful when dealing with code created from Cweb source files. When Etags tags the generated file, it writes tags pointing to the source file. *** New option --parse-stdin=FILE. This option is mostly useful when calling etags from programs. It can be used (only once) in place of a file name on the command line. Etags reads from standard input and marks the produced tags as belonging to the file FILE. ** VC Changes +++ *** The key C-x C-q only changes the read-only state of the buffer (toggle-read-only). It no longer checks files in or out. We made this change because we held a poll and found that many users were unhappy with the previous behavior. If you do prefer this behavior, you can bind `vc-toggle-read-only' to C-x C-q in your `.emacs' file: (global-set-key "\C-x\C-q" 'vc-toggle-read-only) The function `vc-toggle-read-only' will continue to exist. +++ *** The new variable `vc-cvs-global-switches' specifies switches that are passed to any CVS command invoked by VC. These switches are used as "global options" for CVS, which means they are inserted before the command name. For example, this allows you to specify a compression level using the `-z#' option for CVS. +++ *** New backends for Subversion and Meta-CVS. +++ *** VC-Annotate mode enhancements In VC-Annotate mode, you can now use the following key bindings for enhanced functionality to browse the annotations of past revisions, or to view diffs or log entries directly from vc-annotate-mode: P: annotates the previous revision N: annotates the next revision J: annotates the revision at line A: annotates the revision previous to line D: shows the diff of the revision at line with its previous revision L: shows the log of the revision at line W: annotates the workfile (most up to date) version ** pcl-cvs changes: +++ *** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d y' command to view the diffs between the local version of the file and yesterday's head revision in the repository. +++ *** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d r' command to view the changes anyone has committed to the repository since you last executed `checkout', `update' or `commit'. That means using cvs diff options -rBASE -rHEAD. +++ ** The new variable `mail-default-directory' specifies `default-directory' for mail buffers. This directory is used for auto-save files of mail buffers. It defaults to "~/". +++ ** The mode line can indicate new mail in a directory or file. See the documentation of the user option `display-time-mail-directory'. ** Rmail changes: --- *** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer. +++ *** Support for `movemail' from GNU mailutils was added to Rmail. This version of `movemail' allows to read mail from a wide range of mailbox formats, including remote POP3 and IMAP4 mailboxes with or without TLS encryption. If GNU mailutils is installed on the system and its version of `movemail' can be found in exec-path, it will be used instead of the native one. ** Gnus package --- *** Gnus now includes Sieve and PGG Sieve is a library for managing Sieve scripts. PGG is a library to handle PGP/MIME. --- *** There are many news features, bug fixes and improvements. See the file GNUS-NEWS or the node "Oort Gnus" in the Gnus manual for details. --- ** MH-E changes. Upgraded to MH-E version 7.84. There have been major changes since version 5.0.2; see MH-E-NEWS for details. ** Calendar changes: +++ *** There is a new calendar package, icalendar.el, that can be used to convert Emacs diary entries to/from the iCalendar format. +++ *** Diary sexp entries can have custom marking in the calendar. Diary sexp functions which only apply to certain days (such as `diary-block' or `diary-cyclic') now take an optional parameter MARK, which is the name of a face or a single-character string indicating how to highlight the day in the calendar display. Specifying a single-character string as @var{mark} places the character next to the day in the calendar. Specifying a face highlights the day with that face. This lets you have different colors or markings for vacations, appointments, paydays or anything else using a sexp. +++ *** The new function `calendar-goto-day-of-year' (g D) prompts for a year and day number, and moves to that date. Negative day numbers count backward from the end of the year. +++ *** The new Calendar function `calendar-goto-iso-week' (g w) prompts for a year and a week number, and moves to the first day of that ISO week. --- *** The new variable `calendar-minimum-window-height' affects the window generated by the function `generate-calendar-window'. --- *** The functions `holiday-easter-etc' and `holiday-advent' now take optional arguments, in order to only report on the specified holiday rather than all. This makes customization of variables such as `christian-holidays' simpler. --- *** The function `simple-diary-display' now by default sets a header line. This can be controlled through the variables `diary-header-line-flag' and `diary-header-line-format'. +++ *** The procedure for activating appointment reminders has changed: use the new function `appt-activate'. The new variable `appt-display-format' controls how reminders are displayed, replacing `appt-issue-message', `appt-visible', and `appt-msg-window'. +++ *** The new functions `diary-from-outlook', `diary-from-outlook-gnus', and `diary-from-outlook-rmail' can be used to import diary entries from Outlook-format appointments in mail messages. The variable `diary-outlook-formats' can be customized to recognize additional formats. --- ** sql changes. *** The variable `sql-product' controls the highlightng of different SQL dialects. This variable can be set globally via Customize, on a buffer-specific basis via local variable settings, or for the current session using the new SQL->Product submenu. (This menu replaces the SQL->Highlighting submenu.) The following values are supported: ansi ANSI Standard (default) db2 DB2 informix Informix ingres Ingres interbase Interbase linter Linter ms Microsoft mysql MySQL oracle Oracle postgres Postgres solid Solid sqlite SQLite sybase Sybase The current product name will be shown on the mode line following the SQL mode indicator. The technique of setting `sql-mode-font-lock-defaults' directly in your `.emacs' will no longer establish the default highlighting -- Use `sql-product' to accomplish this. ANSI keywords are always highlighted. *** The function `sql-add-product-keywords' can be used to add font-lock rules to the product specific rules. For example, to have all identifiers ending in `_t' under MS SQLServer treated as a type, you would use the following line in your .emacs file: (sql-add-product-keywords 'ms '(("\\<\\w+_t\\>" . font-lock-type-face))) *** Oracle support includes keyword highlighting for Oracle 9i. Most SQL and PL/SQL keywords are implemented. SQL*Plus commands are highlighted in `font-lock-doc-face'. *** Microsoft SQLServer support has been significantly improved. Keyword highlighting for SqlServer 2000 is implemented. sql-interactive-mode defaults to use osql, rather than isql, because osql flushes its error stream more frequently. Thus error messages are displayed when they occur rather than when the session is terminated. If the username and password are not provided to `sql-ms', osql is called with the `-E' command line argument to use the operating system credentials to authenticate the user. *** Postgres support is enhanced. Keyword highlighting of Postgres 7.3 is implemented. Prompting for the username and the pgsql `-U' option is added. *** MySQL support is enhanced. Keyword higlighting of MySql 4.0 is implemented. *** Imenu support has been enhanced to locate tables, views, indexes, packages, procedures, functions, triggers, sequences, rules, and defaults. *** Added SQL->Start SQLi Session menu entry which calls the appropriate `sql-interactive-mode' wrapper for the current setting of `sql-product'. --- *** sql.el supports the SQLite interpreter--call 'sql-sqlite'. ** FFAP changes: +++ *** New ffap commands and keybindings: C-x C-r (`ffap-read-only'), C-x C-v (`ffap-alternate-file'), C-x C-d (`ffap-list-directory'), C-x 4 r (`ffap-read-only-other-window'), C-x 4 d (`ffap-dired-other-window'), C-x 5 r (`ffap-read-only-other-frame'), C-x 5 d (`ffap-dired-other-frame'). --- *** FFAP accepts wildcards in a file name by default. C-x C-f passes the file name to `find-file' with non-nil WILDCARDS argument, which visits multiple files, and C-x d passes it to `dired'. --- ** In skeleton.el, `-' marks the `skeleton-point' without interregion interaction. `@' has reverted to only setting `skeleton-positions' and no longer sets `skeleton-point'. Skeletons which used @ to mark `skeleton-point' independent of `_' should now use `-' instead. The updated `skeleton-insert' docstring explains these new features along with other details of skeleton construction. --- ** New variable `hs-set-up-overlay' allows customization of the overlay used to effect hiding for hideshow minor mode. Integration with isearch handles the overlay property `display' specially, preserving it during temporary overlay showing in the course of an isearch operation. +++ ** `hide-ifdef-mode' now uses overlays rather than selective-display to hide its text. This should be mostly transparent but slightly changes the behavior of motion commands like C-e and C-p. --- ** `partial-completion-mode' now handles partial completion on directory names. --- ** The type-break package now allows `type-break-file-name' to be nil and if so, doesn't store any data across sessions. This is handy if you don't want the `.type-break' file in your home directory or are annoyed by the need for interaction when you kill Emacs. --- ** `ps-print' can now print characters from the mule-unicode charsets. Printing text with characters from the mule-unicode-* sets works with `ps-print', provided that you have installed the appropriate BDF fonts. See the file INSTALL for URLs where you can find these fonts. --- ** New command `strokes-global-set-stroke-string'. This is like `strokes-global-set-stroke', but it allows you to bind the stroke directly to a string to insert. This is convenient for using strokes as an input method. ** Emacs server changes: +++ *** You can have several Emacs servers on the same machine. % emacs --eval '(setq server-name "foo")' -f server-start & % emacs --eval '(setq server-name "bar")' -f server-start & % emacsclient -s foo file1 % emacsclient -s bar file2 +++ *** The `emacsclient' command understands the options `--eval' and `--display' which tell Emacs respectively to evaluate the given Lisp expression and to use the given display when visiting files. +++ *** User option `server-mode' can be used to start a server process. --- ** LDAP support now defaults to ldapsearch from OpenLDAP version 2. +++ ** You can now disable pc-selection-mode after enabling it. M-x pc-selection-mode behaves like a proper minor mode, and with no argument it toggles the mode. Turning off PC-Selection mode restores the global key bindings that were replaced by turning on the mode. --- ** `uniquify-strip-common-suffix' tells uniquify to prefer `file|dir1' and `file|dir2' to `file|dir1/subdir' and `file|dir2/subdir'. --- ** Support for `magic cookie' standout modes has been removed. Emacs still works on terminals that require magic cookies in order to use standout mode, but they can no longer display mode-lines in inverse-video. --- ** The game `mpuz' is enhanced. `mpuz' now allows the 2nd factor not to have two identical digits. By default, all trivial operations involving whole lines are performed automatically. The game uses faces for better visual feedback. --- ** display-battery-mode replaces display-battery. --- ** calculator.el now has radix grouping mode. To enable this, set `calculator-output-radix' non-nil. In this mode a separator character is used every few digits, making it easier to see byte boundries etc. For more info, see the documentation of the variable `calculator-radix-grouping-mode'. --- ** fast-lock.el and lazy-lock.el are obsolete. Use jit-lock.el instead. --- ** iso-acc.el is now obsolete. Use one of the latin input methods instead. --- ** cplus-md.el has been deleted. * Changes in Emacs 22.1 on non-free operating systems +++ ** Passing resources on the command line now works on MS Windows. You can use --xrm to pass resource settings to Emacs, overriding any existing values. For example: emacs --xrm "Emacs.Background:red" --xrm "Emacs.Geometry:100x20" will start up Emacs on an initial frame of 100x20 with red background, irrespective of geometry or background setting on the Windows registry. --- ** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor. This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs. --- ** Tooltips now work on MS Windows. See the Emacs 21.1 NEWS entry for tooltips for details. --- ** Images are now supported on MS Windows. PBM and XBM images are supported out of the box. Other image formats depend on external libraries. All of these libraries have been ported to Windows, and can be found in both source and binary form at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. Note that libpng also depends on zlib, and tiff depends on the version of jpeg that it was compiled against. For additional information, see nt/INSTALL. --- ** Sound is now supported on MS Windows. WAV format is supported on all versions of Windows, other formats such as AU, AIFF and MP3 may be supported in the more recent versions of Windows, or when other software provides hooks into the system level sound support for those formats. --- ** Different shaped mouse pointers are supported on MS Windows. The mouse pointer changes shape depending on what is under the pointer. --- ** Pointing devices with more than 3 buttons are now supported on MS Windows. The new variable `w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system' controls whether Emacs should handle the extra buttons itself (the default), or pass them to Windows to be handled with system-wide functions. --- ** Emacs takes note of colors defined in Control Panel on MS-Windows. The Control Panel defines some default colors for applications in much the same way as wildcard X Resources do on X. Emacs now adds these colors to the colormap prefixed by System (eg SystemMenu for the default Menu background, SystemMenuText for the foreground), and uses some of them to initialize some of the default faces. `list-colors-display' shows the list of System color names, in case you wish to use them in other faces. --- ** On MS Windows NT/W2K/XP, Emacs uses Unicode for clipboard operations. Those systems use Unicode internally, so this allows Emacs to share multilingual text with other applications. On other versions of MS Windows, Emacs now uses the appropriate locale coding-system, so the clipboard should work correctly for your local language without any customizations. --- ** On Mac OS, `keyboard-coding-system' changes based on the keyboard script. --- ** The variable `mac-keyboard-text-encoding' and the constants `kTextEncodingMacRoman', `kTextEncodingISOLatin1', and `kTextEncodingISOLatin2' are obsolete. * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 22.1 --- ** The variables post-command-idle-hook and post-command-idle-delay have been removed. Use run-with-idle-timer instead. +++ ** `suppress-keymap' now works by remapping `self-insert-command' to the command `undefined'. (In earlier Emacs versions, it used `substitute-key-definition' to rebind self inserting characters to `undefined'.) +++ ** Mode line display ignores text properties as well as the :propertize and :eval forms in the value of a variable whose `risky-local-variable' property is nil. --- ** Support for Mocklisp has been removed. * Lisp Changes in Emacs 22.1 ** General Lisp changes: +++ *** The function `eql' is now available without requiring the CL package. +++ *** `makehash' is now obsolete. Use `make-hash-table' instead. +++ *** `add-to-list' takes an optional third argument, APPEND. If APPEND is non-nil, the new element gets added at the end of the list instead of at the beginning. This change actually occurred in Emacs 21.1, but was not documented then. +++ *** New function `copy-tree' makes a copy of a tree. It recursively copyies through both CARs and CDRs. +++ *** New function `delete-dups' deletes `equal' duplicate elements from a list. It modifies the list destructively, like `delete'. Of several `equal' occurrences of an element in the list, the one that's kept is the first one. +++ *** New function `rassq-delete-all'. (rassq-delete-all VALUE ALIST) deletes, from ALIST, each element whose CDR is `eq' to the specified value. +++ *** The function `number-sequence' makes a list of equally-separated numbers. For instance, (number-sequence 4 9) returns (4 5 6 7 8 9). By default, the separation is 1, but you can specify a different separation as the third argument. (number-sequence 1.5 6 2) returns (1.5 3.5 5.5). +++ *** New variables `most-positive-fixnum' and `most-negative-fixnum'. They hold the largest and smallest possible integer values. +++ *** Minor change in the function `format'. Some flags that were accepted but not implemented (such as "*") are no longer accepted. +++ *** Functions `get' and `plist-get' no longer give errors for bad plists. They return nil for a malformed property list or if the list is cyclic. +++ *** New functions `lax-plist-get' and `lax-plist-put'. They are like `plist-get' and `plist-put', except that they compare the property name using `equal' rather than `eq'. +++ *** New variable `print-continuous-numbering'. When this is non-nil, successive calls to print functions use a single numbering scheme for circular structure references. This is only relevant when `print-circle' is non-nil. When you bind `print-continuous-numbering' to t, you should also bind `print-number-table' to nil. +++ *** New function `macroexpand-all' expands all macros in a form. It is similar to the Common-Lisp function of the same name. One difference is that it guarantees to return the original argument if no expansion is done, which can be tested using `eq'. +++ *** The function `atan' now accepts an optional second argument. When called with 2 arguments, as in `(atan Y X)', `atan' returns the angle in radians between the vector [X, Y] and the X axis. (This is equivalent to the standard C library function `atan2'.) +++ *** A function or macro's doc string can now specify the calling pattern. You put this info in the doc string's last line. It should be formatted so as to match the regexp "\n\n(fn .*)\\'". If you don't specify this explicitly, Emacs determines it from the actual argument names. Usually that default is right, but not always. +++ *** New macro `with-local-quit' temporarily allows quitting. A quit inside the body of `with-local-quit' is caught by the `with-local-quit' form itself, but another quit will happen later once the code that has inhibitted quitting exits. This is for use around potentially blocking or long-running code inside timer functions and `post-command-hook' functions. +++ *** New macro `define-obsolete-function-alias'. This combines `defalias' and `make-obsolete'. +++ *** New function `unsafep' determines whether a Lisp form is safe. It returns nil if the given Lisp form can't possibly do anything dangerous; otherwise it returns a reason why the form might be unsafe (calls unknown function, alters global variable, etc). *** `list-faces-display' takes an optional argument, REGEXP. If it is non-nil, the function lists only faces matching this regexp. ** Lisp code indentation features: +++ *** The `defmacro' form can contain indentation and edebug declarations. These declarations specify how to indent the macro calls in Lisp mode and how to debug them with Edebug. You write them like this: (defmacro NAME LAMBDA-LIST [DOC-STRING] [DECLARATION ...] ...) DECLARATION is a list `(declare DECLARATION-SPECIFIER ...)'. The possible declaration specifiers are: (indent INDENT) Set NAME's `lisp-indent-function' property to INDENT. (edebug DEBUG) Set NAME's `edebug-form-spec' property to DEBUG. (This is equivalent to writing a `def-edebug-spec' for the macro, but this is cleaner.) --- *** cl-indent now allows customization of Indentation of backquoted forms. See the new user option `lisp-backquote-indentation'. --- *** cl-indent now handles indentation of simple and extended `loop' forms. The new user options `lisp-loop-keyword-indentation', `lisp-loop-forms-indentation', and `lisp-simple-loop-indentation' can be used to customize the indentation of keywords and forms in loop forms. +++ ** Variable aliases: *** New function: defvaralias ALIAS-VAR BASE-VAR [DOCSTRING] This function defines the symbol ALIAS-VAR as a variable alias for symbol BASE-VAR. This means that retrieving the value of ALIAS-VAR returns the value of BASE-VAR, and changing the value of ALIAS-VAR changes the value of BASE-VAR. DOCSTRING, if present, is the documentation for ALIAS-VAR; else it has the same documentation as BASE-VAR. *** New function: indirect-variable VARIABLE This function returns the variable at the end of the chain of aliases of VARIABLE. If VARIABLE is not a symbol, or if VARIABLE is not defined as an alias, the function returns VARIABLE. It might be noteworthy that variables aliases work for all kinds of variables, including buffer-local and frame-local variables. +++ *** The macro `define-obsolete-variable-alias' combines `defvaralias' and `make-obsolete-variable'. ** defcustom changes: +++ *** The new customization type `float' requires a floating point number. ** String changes: +++ *** The escape sequence \s is now interpreted as a SPACE character. Exception: In a character constant, if it is followed by a `-' in a character constant (e.g. ?\s-A), it is still interpreted as the super modifier. In strings, \s is always interpreted as a space. +++ *** A hex escape in a string constant forces the string to be multibyte. +++ *** An octal escape in a string constant forces the string to be unibyte. +++ *** `split-string' now includes null substrings in the returned list if the optional argument SEPARATORS is non-nil and there are matches for SEPARATORS at the beginning or end of the string. If SEPARATORS is nil, or if the new optional third argument OMIT-NULLS is non-nil, all empty matches are omitted from the returned list. +++ *** New function `string-to-multibyte' converts a unibyte string to a multibyte string with the same individual character codes. +++ *** New function `substring-no-properties' returns a substring without text properties. +++ *** The new function `assoc-string' replaces `assoc-ignore-case' and `assoc-ignore-representation', which are still available, but have been declared obsolete. +++ ** Displaying warnings to the user. See the functions `warn' and `display-warning', or the Lisp Manual. If you want to be sure the warning will not be overlooked, this facility is much better than using `message', since it displays warnings in a separate window. +++ ** Progress reporters. These provide a simple and uniform way for commands to present progress messages for the user. See the new functions `make-progress-reporter', `progress-reporter-update', `progress-reporter-force-update', `progress-reporter-done', and `dotimes-with-progress-reporter'. ** Buffer positions: +++ *** Function `compute-motion' now calculates the usable window width if the WIDTH argument is nil. If the TOPOS argument is nil, the usable window height and width is used. +++ *** The `line-move', `scroll-up', and `scroll-down' functions will now modify the window vscroll to scroll through display rows that are taller that the height of the window, for example in the presence of large images. To disable this feature, bind the new variable `auto-window-vscroll' to nil. +++ *** The argument to `forward-word', `backward-word' is optional. It defaults to 1. +++ *** Argument to `forward-to-indentation' and `backward-to-indentation' is optional. It defaults to 1. +++ *** New function `mouse-on-link-p' test if a position is in a clickable link. This is the function used by the new `mouse-1-click-follows-link' functionality. +++ *** New function `line-number-at-pos' returns the line number of a position. It an optional buffer position argument that defaults to point. +++ *** `field-beginning' and `field-end' take new optional argument, LIMIT. This argument tells them not to search beyond LIMIT. Instead they give up and return LIMIT. +++ *** Function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now returns the pixel coordinates and partial visiblity state of the corresponding row, if the PARTIALLY arg is non-nil. +++ *** New functions `posn-at-point' and `posn-at-x-y' return click-event-style position information for a given visible buffer position or for a given window pixel coordinate. ** Text modification: +++ *** The new function `insert-for-yank' normally works like `insert', but removes the text properties in the `yank-excluded-properties' list and handles the `yank-handler' text property. +++ *** The new function `insert-buffer-substring-as-yank' is like `insert-for-yank' except that it gets the text from another buffer as in `insert-buffer-substring'. +++ *** The new function `insert-buffer-substring-no-properties' is like `insert-buffer-substring', but removes all text properties from the inserted substring. +++ *** The new function `filter-buffer-substring' extracts a buffer substring, passes it through a set of filter functions, and returns the filtered substring. Use it instead of `buffer-substring' or `delete-and-extract-region' when copying text into a user-accessible data structure, such as the kill-ring, X clipboard, or a register. The list of filter function is specified by the new variable `buffer-substring-filters'. For example, Longlines mode adds to `buffer-substring-filters' to remove soft newlines from the copied text. +++ *** Function `translate-region' accepts also a char-table as TABLE argument. +++ *** The new translation table `translation-table-for-input' is used for customizing self-insertion. The character to be inserted is translated through it. --- *** Text clones. The new function `text-clone-create'. Text clones are chunks of text that are kept identical by transparently propagating changes from one clone to the other. --- *** The function `insert-string' is now obsolete. +++ ** Atomic change groups. To perform some changes in the current buffer "atomically" so that they either all succeed or are all undone, use `atomic-change-group' around the code that makes changes. For instance: (atomic-change-group (insert foo) (delete-region x y)) If an error (or other nonlocal exit) occurs inside the body of `atomic-change-group', it unmakes all the changes in that buffer that were during the execution of the body. The change group has no effect on any other buffers--any such changes remain. If you need something more sophisticated, you can directly call the lower-level functions that `atomic-change-group' uses. Here is how. To set up a change group for one buffer, call `prepare-change-group'. Specify the buffer as argument; it defaults to the current buffer. This function returns a "handle" for the change group. You must save the handle to activate the change group and then finish it. Before you change the buffer again, you must activate the change group. Pass the handle to `activate-change-group' afterward to do this. After you make the changes, you must finish the change group. You can either accept the changes or cancel them all. Call `accept-change-group' to accept the changes in the group as final; call `cancel-change-group' to undo them all. You should use `unwind-protect' to make sure the group is always finished. The call to `activate-change-group' should be inside the `unwind-protect', in case the user types C-g just after it runs. (This is one reason why `prepare-change-group' and `activate-change-group' are separate functions.) Once you finish the group, don't use the handle again--don't try to finish the same group twice. To make a multibuffer change group, call `prepare-change-group' once for each buffer you want to cover, then use `nconc' to combine the returned values, like this: (nconc (prepare-change-group buffer-1) (prepare-change-group buffer-2)) You can then activate the multibuffer change group with a single call to `activate-change-group', and finish it with a single call to `accept-change-group' or `cancel-change-group'. Nested use of several change groups for the same buffer works as you would expect. Non-nested use of change groups for the same buffer will lead to undesirable results, so don't let it happen; the first change group you start for any given buffer should be the last one finished. ** Buffer-related changes: --- *** `list-buffers-noselect' now takes an additional argument, BUFFER-LIST. If it is non-nil, it specifies which buffers to list. +++ *** `kill-buffer-hook' is now a permanent local. +++ *** The new function `buffer-local-value' returns the buffer-local binding of VARIABLE (a symbol) in buffer BUFFER. If VARIABLE does not have a buffer-local binding in buffer BUFFER, it returns the default value of VARIABLE instead. ** Local variables lists: +++ *** Text properties in local variables. A file local variables list cannot specify a string with text properties--any specified text properties are discarded. +++ *** The variable `safe-local-eval-forms' specifies a list of forms that are ok to evaluate when they appear in an `eval' local variables specification. Normally Emacs asks for confirmation before evaluating such a form, but if the form appears in this list, no confirmation is needed. --- *** If a function has a non-nil `safe-local-eval-function' property, that means it is ok to evaluate some calls to that function when it appears in an `eval' local variables specification. If the property is t, then any form calling that function with constant arguments is ok. If the property is a function or list of functions, they are called with the form as argument, and if any returns t, the form is ok to call. If the form is not "ok to call", that means Emacs asks for confirmation as before. ** Searching and matching changes: +++ *** New function `looking-back' checks whether a regular expression matches the text before point. Specifying the LIMIT argument bounds how far back the match can start; this is a way to keep it from taking too long. +++ *** The new variable `search-spaces-regexp' controls how to search for spaces in a regular expression. If it is non-nil, it should be a regular expression, and any series of spaces stands for that regular expression. If it is nil, spaces stand for themselves. Spaces inside of constructs such as `[..]' and inside loops such as `*', `+', and `?' are never replaced with `search-spaces-regexp'. +++ *** New regular expression operators, `\_<' and `\_>'. These match the beginning and end of a symbol. A symbol is a non-empty sequence of either word or symbol constituent characters, as specified by the syntax table. --- *** rx.el has new corresponding `symbol-end' and `symbol-start' elements. +++ *** `skip-chars-forward' and `skip-chars-backward' now handle character classes such as `[:alpha:]', along with individual characters and ranges. --- *** In `replace-match', the replacement text no longer inherits properties from surrounding text. +++ *** The list returned by `(match-data t)' now has the buffer as a final element, if the last match was on a buffer. `set-match-data' accepts such a list for restoring the match state. +++ *** Functions `match-data' and `set-match-data' now have an optional argument `reseat'. When non-nil, all markers in the match data list passed to these function will be reseated to point to nowhere, and if the value of `reseat' is `evaporate', the markers are put onto the free list. Note that no other references to those markers must exist if `evaporate' is specified for the `reseat' argument. +++ *** The default value of `sentence-end' is now defined using the new variable `sentence-end-without-space', which contains such characters that end a sentence without following spaces. The function `sentence-end' should be used to obtain the value of the variable `sentence-end'. If the variable `sentence-end' is nil, then this function returns the regexp constructed from the variables `sentence-end-without-period', `sentence-end-double-space' and `sentence-end-without-space'. ** Undo changes: +++ *** `buffer-undo-list' can allows programmable elements. These elements have the form (apply FUNNAME . ARGS), where FUNNAME is a symbol other than t or nil. That stands for a high-level change that should be undone by evaluating (apply FUNNAME ARGS). These entries can also have the form (apply DELTA BEG END FUNNAME . ARGS) which indicates that the change which took place was limited to the range BEG...END and increased the buffer size by DELTA. +++ *** If the buffer's undo list for the current command gets longer than `undo-outer-limit', garbage collection empties it. This is to prevent it from using up the available memory and choking Emacs. +++ ** New `yank-handler' text property can be used to control how previously killed text on the kill ring is reinserted. The value of the `yank-handler' property must be a list with one to four elements with the following format: (FUNCTION PARAM NOEXCLUDE UNDO). The `insert-for-yank' function looks for a yank-handler property on the first character on its string argument (typically the first element on the kill-ring). If a `yank-handler' property is found, the normal behavior of `insert-for-yank' is modified in various ways: When FUNCTION is present and non-nil, it is called instead of `insert' to insert the string. FUNCTION takes one argument--the object to insert. If PARAM is present and non-nil, it replaces STRING as the object passed to FUNCTION (or `insert'); for example, if FUNCTION is `yank-rectangle', PARAM should be a list of strings to insert as a rectangle. If NOEXCLUDE is present and non-nil, the normal removal of the `yank-excluded-properties' is not performed; instead FUNCTION is responsible for removing those properties. This may be necessary if FUNCTION adjusts point before or after inserting the object. If UNDO is present and non-nil, it is a function that will be called by `yank-pop' to undo the insertion of the current object. It is called with two arguments, the start and end of the current region. FUNCTION can set `yank-undo-function' to override the UNDO value. *** The functions `kill-new', `kill-append', and `kill-region' now have an optional argument to specify the `yank-handler' text property to put on the killed text. *** The function `yank-pop' will now use a non-nil value of the variable `yank-undo-function' (instead of `delete-region') to undo the previous `yank' or `yank-pop' command (or a call to `insert-for-yank'). The function `insert-for-yank' automatically sets that variable according to the UNDO element of the string argument's `yank-handler' text property if present. *** The function `insert-for-yank' now supports strings where the `yank-handler' property does not span the first character of the string. The old behavior is available if you call `insert-for-yank-1' instead. ** Syntax table changes: +++ *** The macro `with-syntax-table' no longer copies the syntax table. +++ *** The new function `syntax-after' returns the syntax code of the character after a specified buffer position, taking account of text properties as well as the character code. +++ *** `syntax-class' extracts the class of a syntax code (as returned by `syntax-after'). *** The new function `syntax-ppss' rovides an efficient way to find the current syntactic context at point. ** File operation changes: +++ *** New vars `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' used when searching for an executable or an Emacs Lisp file. +++ *** The new primitive `set-file-times' sets a file's access and modification times. Magic file name handlers can handle this operation. +++ *** The new function `file-remote-p' tests a file name and returns non-nil if it specifies a remote file (one that Emacs accesses using its own special methods and not directly through the file system). The value in that case is an identifier for the remote file system. +++ *** `buffer-auto-save-file-format' is the new name for what was formerly called `auto-save-file-format'. It is now a permanent local. +++ *** Functions `file-name-sans-extension' and `file-name-extension' now ignore the leading dots in file names, so that file names such as `.emacs' are treated as extensionless. +++ *** `copy-file' now takes an additional option arg MUSTBENEW. This argument works like the MUSTBENEW argument of write-file. +++ *** `visited-file-modtime' and `calendar-time-from-absolute' now return a list of two integers, instead of a cons. +++ *** `file-chase-links' now takes an optional second argument LIMIT which specifies the maximum number of links to chase through. If after that many iterations the file name obtained is still a symbolic link, `file-chase-links' returns it anyway. +++ *** The new hook `before-save-hook' is invoked by `basic-save-buffer' before saving buffers. This allows packages to perform various final tasks, for example; it can be used by the copyright package to make sure saved files have the current year in any copyright headers. +++ *** If `buffer-save-without-query' is non-nil in some buffer, `save-some-buffers' will always save that buffer without asking (if it's modified). +++ *** New function `locate-file' searches for a file in a list of directories. `locate-file' accepts a name of a file to search (a string), and two lists: a list of directories to search in and a list of suffixes to try; typical usage might use `exec-path' and `load-path' for the list of directories, and `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' for the list of suffixes. The function also accepts a predicate argument to further filter candidate files. One advantage of using this function is that the list of suffixes in `exec-suffixes' is OS-dependant, so this function will find executables without polluting Lisp code with OS dependancies. --- *** The precedence of file name handlers has been changed. Instead of choosing the first handler that matches, `find-file-name-handler' now gives precedence to a file name handler that matches nearest the end of the file name. More precisely, the handler whose (match-beginning 0) is the largest is chosen. In case of ties, the old "first matched" rule applies. +++ *** A file name handler can declare which operations it handles. You do this by putting an `operation' property on the handler name symbol. The property value should be a list of the operations that the handler really handles. It won't be called for any other operations. This is useful for autoloaded handlers, to prevent them from being autoloaded when not really necessary. ** Input changes: +++ *** An interactive specification can now use the code letter 'U' to get the up-event that was discarded in case the last key sequence read for a previous `k' or `K' argument was a down-event; otherwise nil is used. +++ *** The new interactive-specification `G' reads a file name much like `F', but if the input is a directory name (even defaulted), it returns just the directory name. --- *** Functions `y-or-n-p', `read-char', `read-key-sequence' and the like, that display a prompt but don't use the minibuffer, now display the prompt using the text properties (esp. the face) of the prompt string. +++ *** (while-no-input BODY...) runs BODY, but only so long as no input arrives. If the user types or clicks anything, BODY stops as if a quit had occurred. `while-no-input' returns the value of BODY, if BODY finishes. It returns nil if BODY was aborted. ** Minibuffer changes: +++ *** The new function `minibufferp' returns non-nil if its optional buffer argument is a minibuffer. If the argument is omitted, it defaults to the current buffer. +++ *** New function `minibuffer-selected-window' returns the window which was selected when entering the minibuffer. +++ *** `read-from-minibuffer' now accepts an additional argument KEEP-ALL saying to put all inputs in the history list, even empty ones. +++ *** The `read-file-name' function now takes an additional argument which specifies a predicate which the file name read must satify. The new variable `read-file-name-predicate' contains the predicate argument while reading the file name from the minibuffer; the predicate in this variable is used by read-file-name-internal to filter the completion list. --- *** The new variable `read-file-name-function' can be used by Lisp code to override the built-in `read-file-name' function. +++ *** The new variable `read-file-name-completion-ignore-case' specifies whether completion ignores case when reading a file name with the `read-file-name' function. +++ *** The new function `read-directory-name' for reading a directory name. It is like `read-file-name' except that the defaulting works better for directories, and completion inside it shows only directories. ** Completion changes: +++ *** The functions `all-completions' and `try-completion' now accept lists of strings as well as hash-tables additionally to alists, obarrays and functions. Furthermore, the function `test-completion' is now exported to Lisp. The keys in alists and hash tables can be either strings or symbols, which are automatically converted with to strings. +++ *** The new macro `dynamic-completion-table' supports using functions as a dynamic completion table. (dynamic-completion-table FUN) FUN is called with one argument, the string for which completion is required, and it should return an alist containing all the intended possible completions. This alist can be a full list of possible completions so that FUN can ignore the value of its argument. If completion is performed in the minibuffer, FUN will be called in the buffer from which the minibuffer was entered. `dynamic-completion-table' then computes the completion. +++ *** The new macro `lazy-completion-table' initializes a variable as a lazy completion table. (lazy-completion-table VAR FUN &rest ARGS) If the completion table VAR is used for the first time (e.g., by passing VAR as an argument to `try-completion'), the function FUN is called with arguments ARGS. FUN must return the completion table that will be stored in VAR. If completion is requested in the minibuffer, FUN will be called in the buffer from which the minibuffer was entered. The return value of `lazy-completion-table' must be used to initialize the value of VAR. +++ ** Enhancements to keymaps. *** Cleaner way to enter key sequences. You can enter a constant key sequence in a more natural format, the same one used for saving keyboard macros, using the macro `kbd'. For example, (kbd "C-x C-f") => "\^x\^f" *** Interactive commands can be remapped through keymaps. This is an alternative to using `defadvice' or `substitute-key-definition' to modify the behavior of a key binding using the normal keymap binding and lookup functionality. When a key sequence is bound to a command, and that command is remapped to another command, that command is run instead of the original command. Example: Suppose that minor mode `my-mode' has defined the commands `my-kill-line' and `my-kill-word', and it wants C-k (and any other key bound to `kill-line') to run the command `my-kill-line' instead of `kill-line', and likewise it wants to run `my-kill-word' instead of `kill-word'. Instead of rebinding C-k and the other keys in the minor mode map, command remapping allows you to directly map `kill-line' into `my-kill-line' and `kill-word' into `my-kill-word' using `define-key': (define-key my-mode-map [remap kill-line] 'my-kill-line) (define-key my-mode-map [remap kill-word] 'my-kill-word) When `my-mode' is enabled, its minor mode keymap is enabled too. So when the user types C-k, that runs the command `my-kill-line'. Only one level of remapping is supported. In the above example, this means that if `my-kill-line' is remapped to `other-kill', then C-k still runs `my-kill-line'. The following changes have been made to provide command remapping: - Command remappings are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key `remap', i.e. `(define-key MAP [remap CMD] DEF)' remaps command CMD to definition DEF in keymap MAP. The definition is not limited to another command; it can be anything accepted for a normal binding. - The new function `command-remapping' returns the binding for a remapped command in the current keymaps, or nil if not remapped. - `key-binding' now remaps interactive commands unless the optional third argument NO-REMAP is non-nil. - `where-is-internal' now returns nil for a remapped command (e.g. `kill-line', when `my-mode' is enabled), and the actual key binding for the command it is remapped to (e.g. C-k for my-kill-line). It also has a new optional fifth argument, NO-REMAP, which inhibits remapping if non-nil (e.g. it returns "C-k" for `kill-line', and "" for `my-kill-line'). - The new variable `this-original-command' contains the original command before remapping. It is equal to `this-command' when the command was not remapped. *** If text has a `keymap' property, that keymap takes precedence over minor mode keymaps. *** The `keymap' property now also works at the ends of overlays and text properties, according to their stickiness. This also means that it works with empty overlays. The same hold for the `local-map' property. *** Dense keymaps now handle inheritance correctly. Previously a dense keymap would hide all of the simple-char key bindings of the parent keymap. *** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1. *** New function `current-active-maps' returns a list of currently active keymaps. *** New function `describe-buffer-bindings' inserts the list of all defined keys and their definitions. *** New function `keymap-prompt' returns the prompt string of a keymap. *** (map-keymap FUNCTION KEYMAP) applies the function to each binding in the keymap. *** New variable `emulation-mode-map-alists'. Lisp packages using many minor mode keymaps can now maintain their own keymap alist separate from `minor-mode-map-alist' by adding their keymap alist to this list. ** Abbrev changes: +++ *** The new function `copy-abbrev-table' copies an abbrev table. It returns a new abbrev table that is a copy of a given abbrev table. +++ *** `define-abbrev' now accepts an optional argument SYSTEM-FLAG. If non-nil, this marks the abbrev as a "system" abbrev, which means that it won't be stored in the user's abbrevs file if he saves the abbrevs. Major modes that predefine some abbrevs should always specify this flag. +++ ** Enhancements to process support *** Function `list-processes' now has an optional argument; if non-nil, it lists only the processes whose query-on-exit flag is set. *** New fns `set-process-query-on-exit-flag' and `process-query-on-exit-flag'. These replace the old function `process-kill-without-query'. That function is still supported, but new code should use the new functions. *** Function `signal-process' now accepts a process object or process name in addition to a process id to identify the signalled process. *** Processes now have an associated property list where programs can maintain process state and other per-process related information. Use the new functions `process-get' and `process-put' to access, add, and modify elements on this property list. Use the new functions `process-plist' and `set-process-plist' to access and replace the entire property list of a process. *** Function `accept-process-output' has a new optional fourth arg JUST-THIS-ONE. If non-nil, only output from the specified process is handled, suspending output from other processes. If value is an integer, also inhibit running timers. This feature is generally not recommended, but may be necessary for specific applications, such as speech synthesis. *** Adaptive read buffering of subprocess output. On some systems, when emacs reads the output from a subprocess, the output data is read in very small blocks, potentially resulting in very poor performance. This behavior can be remedied to some extent by setting the new variable `process-adaptive-read-buffering' to a non-nil value (the default), as it will automatically delay reading from such processes, to allowing them to produce more output before emacs tries to read it. *** The new function `call-process-shell-command'. This executes a shell command command synchronously in a separate process. *** The new function `process-file' is similar to `call-process', but obeys file handlers. The file handler is chosen based on `default-directory'. *** A process filter function gets the output as multibyte string if the process specifies t for its filter's multibyteness. That multibyteness is decided by the value of `default-enable-multibyte-characters' when the process is created, and you can change it later with `set-process-filter-multibyte'. *** The new function `set-process-filter-multibyte' sets the multibyteness of the strings passed to the process's filter. *** The new function `process-filter-multibyte-p' returns the multibyteness of the strings passed to the process's filter. *** If a process's coding system is `raw-text' or `no-conversion' and its buffer is multibyte, the output of the process is at first converted to multibyte by `string-to-multibyte' then inserted in the buffer. Previously, it was converted to multibyte by `string-as-multibyte', which was not compatible with the behavior of file reading. +++ ** Enhanced networking support. *** The new `make-network-process' function makes network connections. It allows opening of stream and datagram connections to a server, as well as create a stream or datagram server inside emacs. - A server is started using :server t arg. - Datagram connection is selected using :type 'datagram arg. - A server can open on a random port using :service t arg. - Local sockets are supported using :family 'local arg. - Non-blocking connect is supported using :nowait t arg. - The process' property list can be initialized using :plist PLIST arg; a copy of the server process' property list is automatically inherited by new client processes created to handle incoming connections. To test for the availability of a given feature, use featurep like this: (featurep 'make-network-process '(:type datagram)) *** The old `open-network-stream' now uses `make-network-process'. *** New functions `process-datagram-address', `set-process-datagram-address'. These functions are used with datagram-based network processes to get and set the current address of the remote partner. *** New function `format-network-address'. This function reformats the Lisp representation of a network address to a printable string. For example, an IP address A.B.C.D and port number P is represented as a five element vector [A B C D P], and the printable string returned for this vector is "A.B.C.D:P". See the doc string for other formatting options. *** `process-contact' has an optional KEY argument. Depending on this argument, you can get the complete list of network process properties or a specific property. Using :local or :remote as the KEY, you get the address of the local or remote end-point. An Inet address is represented as a 5 element vector, where the first 4 elements contain the IP address and the fifth is the port number. *** New functions `stop-process' and `continue-process'. These functions stop and restart communication through a network connection. For a server process, no connections are accepted in the stopped state. For a client process, no input is received in the stopped state. *** New function `network-interface-list'. This function returns a list of network interface names and their current network addresses. *** New function `network-interface-info'. This function returns the network address, hardware address, current status, and other information about a specific network interface. *** Deleting a network process with `delete-process' calls the sentinel. The status message passed to the sentinel for a deleted network process is "deleted". The message passed to the sentinel when the connection is closed by the remote peer has been changed to "connection broken by remote peer". ** Using window objects: +++ *** New function `window-body-height'. This is like `window-height' but does not count the mode line or the header line. +++ *** New function `window-body-height'. This is like `window-height' but does not count the mode line or the header line. +++ *** You can now make a window as short as one line. A window that is just one line tall does not display either a mode line or a header line, even if the variables `mode-line-format' and `header-line-format' call for them. A window that is two lines tall cannot display both a mode line and a header line at once; if the variables call for both, only the mode line actually appears. +++ *** The new function `window-inside-edges' returns the edges of the actual text portion of the window, not including the scroll bar or divider line, the fringes, the display margins, the header line and the mode line. +++ *** The new functions `window-pixel-edges' and `window-inside-pixel-edges' return window edges in units of pixels, rather than columns and lines. +++ *** The new macro `with-selected-window' temporarily switches the selected window without impacting the order of `buffer-list'. +++ *** `select-window' takes an optional second argument NORECORD. This is like `switch-to-buffer'. +++ *** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window of every frame. This way, it restores everything that can be changed by calling `select-window'. +++ *** `set-window-buffer' has an optional argument KEEP-MARGINS. If non-nil, that says to preserve the window's current margin, fringe, and scroll-bar settings. +++ ** Customizable fringe bitmaps *** New function `define-fringe-bitmap' can now be used to create new fringe bitmaps, as well as change the built-in fringe bitmaps. To change a built-in bitmap, do (require 'fringe) and use the symbol identifing the bitmap such as `left-truncation or `continued-line'. *** New function `destroy-fringe-bitmap' deletes a fringe bitmap or restores a built-in one to its default value. *** New function `set-fringe-bitmap-face' specifies the face to be used for a specific fringe bitmap. The face is automatically merged with the `fringe' face, so normally, the face should only specify the foreground color of the bitmap. *** There are new display properties, `left-fringe' and `right-fringe', that can be used to show a specific bitmap in the left or right fringe bitmap of the display line. Format is `display (left-fringe BITMAP [FACE])', where BITMAP is a symbol identifying a fringe bitmap, either built-in or defined with `define-fringe-bitmap', and FACE is an optional face name to be used for displaying the bitmap instead of the default `fringe' face. When specified, FACE is automatically merged with the `fringe' face. *** New function `fringe-bitmaps-at-pos' returns the current fringe bitmaps in the display line at a given buffer position. ** Other window fringe features: +++ *** Controlling the default left and right fringe widths. The default left and right fringe widths for all windows of a frame can now be controlled by setting the `left-fringe' and `right-fringe' frame parameters to an integer value specifying the width in pixels. Setting the width to 0 effectively removes the corresponding fringe. The actual default fringe widths for the frame may deviate from the specified widths, since the combined fringe widths must match an integral number of columns. The extra width is distributed evenly between the left and right fringe. For force a specific fringe width, specify the width as a negative integer (if both widths are negative, only the left fringe gets the specified width). Setting the width to nil (the default), restores the default fringe width which is the minimum number of pixels necessary to display any of the currently defined fringe bitmaps. The width of the built-in fringe bitmaps is 8 pixels. +++ *** Per-window fringe and scrollbar settings **** Windows can now have their own individual fringe widths and position settings. To control the fringe widths of a window, either set the buffer-local variables `left-fringe-width', `right-fringe-width', or call `set-window-fringes'. To control the fringe position in a window, that is, whether fringes are positioned between the display margins and the window's text area, or at the edges of the window, either set the buffer-local variable `fringes-outside-margins' or call `set-window-fringes'. The function `window-fringes' can be used to obtain the current settings. To make `left-fringe-width', `right-fringe-width', and `fringes-outside-margins' take effect, you must set them before displaying the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update of the display margins. **** Windows can now have their own individual scroll-bar settings controlling the width and position of scroll-bars. To control the scroll-bar of a window, either set the buffer-local variables `scroll-bar-mode' and `scroll-bar-width', or call `set-window-scroll-bars'. The function `window-scroll-bars' can be used to obtain the current settings. To make `scroll-bar-mode' and `scroll-bar-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update of the display margins. ** Redisplay features: +++ *** `sit-for' can now be called with args (SECONDS &optional NODISP). +++ *** New function `force-window-update' can initiate a full redisplay of one or all windows. Normally, this is not needed as changes in window contents are detected automatically. However, certain implicit changes to mode lines, header lines, or display properties may require forcing an explicit window update. +++ *** (char-displayable-p CHAR) returns non-nil if Emacs ought to be able to display CHAR. More precisely, if the selected frame's fontset has a font to display the character set that CHAR belongs to. Fontsets can specify a font on a per-character basis; when the fontset does that, this value cannot be accurate. +++ *** You can define multiple overlay arrows via the new variable `overlay-arrow-variable-list'. It contains a list of varibles which contain overlay arrow position markers, including the original `overlay-arrow-position' variable. Each variable on this list can have individual `overlay-arrow-string' and `overlay-arrow-bitmap' properties that specify an overlay arrow string (for non-window terminals) or fringe bitmap (for window systems) to display at the corresponding overlay arrow position. If either property is not set, the default `overlay-arrow-string' or 'overlay-arrow-fringe-bitmap' will be used. +++ *** New `line-height' and `line-spacing' properties for newline characters A newline can now have `line-height' and `line-spacing' text or overlay properties that control the height of the corresponding display row. If the `line-height' property value is t, the newline does not contribute to the height of the display row; instead the height of the newline glyph is reduced. Also, a `line-spacing' property on this newline is ignored. This can be used to tile small images or image slices without adding blank areas between the images. If the `line-height' property value is a positive integer, the value specifies the minimum line height in pixels. If necessary, the line height it increased by increasing the line's ascent. If the `line-height' property value is a float, the minimum line height is calculated by multiplying the default frame line height by the given value. If the `line-height' property value is a cons (FACE . RATIO), the minimum line height is calculated as RATIO * height of named FACE. RATIO is int or float. If FACE is t, it specifies the current face. If the `line-height' property value is a cons (nil . RATIO), the line height is calculated as RATIO * actual height of the line's contents. If the `line-height' value is a cons (HEIGHT . TOTAL), HEIGHT specifies the line height as described above, while TOTAL is any of the forms described above and specifies the total height of the line, causing a varying number of pixels to be inserted after the line to make it line exactly that many pixels high. If the `line-spacing' property value is an positive integer, the value is used as additional pixels to insert after the display line; this overrides the default frame `line-spacing' and any buffer local value of the `line-spacing' variable. If the `line-spacing' property is a float or cons, the line spacing is calculated as specified above for the `line-height' property. +++ *** The buffer local `line-spacing' variable can now have a float value, which is used as a height relative to the default frame line height. +++ *** Enhancements to stretch display properties The display property stretch specification form `(space PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list now allows pixel based width and height specifications, as well as enhanced horizontal text alignment. The value of these properties can now be a (primitive) expression which is evaluated during redisplay. The following expressions are supported: EXPR ::= NUM | (NUM) | UNIT | ELEM | POS | IMAGE | FORM NUM ::= INTEGER | FLOAT | SYMBOL UNIT ::= in | mm | cm | width | height ELEM ::= left-fringe | right-fringe | left-margin | right-margin | scroll-bar | text POS ::= left | center | right FORM ::= (NUM . EXPR) | (OP EXPR ...) OP ::= + | - The form `NUM' specifies a fractional width or height of the default frame font size. The form `(NUM)' specifies an absolute number of pixels. If a symbol is specified, its buffer-local variable binding is used. The `in', `mm', and `cm' units specifies the number of pixels per inch, milli-meter, and centi-meter, resp. The `width' and `height' units correspond to the width and height of the current face font. An image specification corresponds to the width or height of the image. The `left-fringe', `right-fringe', `left-margin', `right-margin', `scroll-bar', and `text' elements specify to the width of the corresponding area of the window. The `left', `center', and `right' positions can be used with :align-to to specify a position relative to the left edge, center, or right edge of the text area. One of the above window elements (except `text') can also be used with :align-to to specify that the position is relative to the left edge of the given area. Once the base offset for a relative position has been set (by the first occurrence of one of these symbols), further occurences of these symbols are interpreted as the width of the area. For example, to align to the center of the left-margin, use :align-to (+ left-margin (0.5 . left-margin)) If no specific base offset is set for alignment, it is always relative to the left edge of the text area. For example, :align-to 0 in a header line aligns with the first text column in the text area. The value of the form `(NUM . EXPR)' is the value of NUM multiplied by the value of the expression EXPR. For example, (2 . in) specifies a width of 2 inches, while (0.5 . IMAGE) specifies half the width (or height) of the specified image. The form `(+ EXPR ...)' adds up the value of the expressions. The form `(- EXPR ...)' negates or subtracts the value of the expressions. +++ *** Normally, the cursor is displayed at the end of any overlay and text property string that may be present at the current window position. The cursor can now be placed on any character of such strings by giving that character a non-nil `cursor' text property. +++ *** The display space :width and :align-to text properties are now supported on text terminals. +++ *** Support for displaying image slices **** New display property (slice X Y WIDTH HEIGHT) can be used with an image property to display only a specific slice of the image. **** Function `insert-image' has new optional fourth arg to specify image slice (X Y WIDTH HEIGHT). **** New function `insert-sliced-image' inserts a given image as a specified number of evenly sized slices (rows x columns). +++ *** Images can now have an associated image map via the :map property. An image map is an alist where each element has the format (AREA ID PLIST). An AREA is specified as either a rectangle, a circle, or a polygon: A rectangle is a cons (rect . ((X0 . Y0) . (X1 . Y1))) specifying the pixel coordinates of the upper left and bottom right corners. A circle is a cons (circle . ((X0 . Y0) . R)) specifying the center and the radius of the circle; R can be a float or integer. A polygon is a cons (poly . [X0 Y0 X1 Y1 ...]) where each pair in the vector describes one corner in the polygon. When the mouse pointer is above a hot-spot area of an image, the PLIST of that hot-spot is consulted; if it contains a `help-echo' property it defines a tool-tip for the hot-spot, and if it contains a `pointer' property, it defines the shape of the mouse cursor when it is over the hot-spot. See the variable `void-area-text-pointer' for possible pointer shapes. When you click the mouse when the mouse pointer is over a hot-spot, an event is composed by combining the ID of the hot-spot with the mouse event, e.g. [area4 mouse-1] if the hot-spot's ID is `area4'. ** Mouse pointer features: +++ (lispref) ??? (man) *** The mouse pointer shape in void text areas (i.e. after the end of a line or below the last line in the buffer) of the text window is now controlled by the new variable `void-text-area-pointer'. The default is to use the `arrow' (non-text) pointer. Other choices are `text' (or nil), `hand', `vdrag', `hdrag', `modeline', and `hourglass'. +++ *** The mouse pointer shape over an image can now be controlled by the :pointer image property. +++ *** The mouse pointer shape over ordinary text or images can now be controlled/overriden via the `pointer' text property. ** Mouse event enhancements: +++ *** Mouse events for clicks on window fringes now specify `left-fringe' or `right-fringe' as the area. +++ *** All mouse events now include a buffer position regardless of where you clicked. For mouse clicks in window margins and fringes, this is a sensible buffer position corresponding to the surrounding text. +++ *** `posn-point' now returns buffer position for non-text area events. +++ *** Function `mouse-set-point' now works for events outside text area. +++ *** New function `posn-area' returns window area clicked on (nil means text area). +++ *** Mouse events include actual glyph column and row for all event types and all areas. +++ *** New function `posn-actual-col-row' returns the actual glyph coordinates of the mouse event position. +++ *** Mouse events can now indicate an image object clicked on. +++ *** Mouse events include relative X and Y pixel coordinates relative to the top left corner of the object (image or character) clicked on. +++ *** Mouse events include the pixel width and height of the object (image or character) clicked on. +++ *** New functions 'posn-object', 'posn-object-x-y', 'posn-object-width-height'. These return the image or string object of a mouse click, the X and Y pixel coordinates relative to the top left corner of that object, and the total width and height of that object. ** Text property and overlay changes: +++ *** Arguments for `remove-overlays' are now optional, so that you can remove all overlays in the buffer with just (remove-overlays). +++ *** New variable `char-property-alias-alist'. This variable allows you to create alternative names for text properties. It works at the same level as `default-text-properties', although it applies to overlays as well. This variable was introduced to implement the `font-lock-face' property. +++ *** New function `get-char-property-and-overlay' accepts the same arguments as `get-char-property' and returns a cons whose car is the return value of `get-char-property' called with those arguments and whose cdr is the overlay in which the property was found, or nil if it was found as a text property or not found at all. +++ *** The new function `remove-list-of-text-properties'. It is like `remove-text-properties' except that it takes a list of property names as argument rather than a property list. ** Face changes +++ *** The new face attribute condition `min-colors' can be used to tailor the face color to the number of colors supported by a display, and define the foreground and background colors accordingly so that they look best on a terminal that supports at least this many colors. This is now the preferred method for defining default faces in a way that makes a good use of the capabilities of the display. +++ *** New function `display-supports-face-attributes-p' can be used to test whether a given set of face attributes is actually displayable. A new predicate `supports' has also been added to the `defface' face specification language, which can be used to do this test for faces defined with `defface'. --- *** The special treatment of faces whose names are of the form `fg:COLOR' or `bg:COLOR' has been removed. Lisp programs should use the `defface' facility for defining faces with specific colors, or use the feature of specifying the face attributes :foreground and :background directly in the `face' property instead of using a named face. +++ *** The first face specification element in a defface can specify `default' instead of frame classification. Then its attributes act as defaults that apply to all the subsequent cases (and can be overridden by them). +++ *** The variable `face-font-rescale-alist' specifies how much larger (or smaller) font we should use. For instance, if the value is '((SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN . 1.3)) and a face requests a font of 10 point, we actually use a font of 13 point if the font matches SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN. --- *** The function `face-differs-from-default-p' now truly checks whether the given face displays differently from the default face or not (previously it did only a very cursory check). +++ *** `face-attribute', `face-foreground', `face-background', `face-stipple'. These now accept a new optional argument, INHERIT, which controls how face inheritance is used when determining the value of a face attribute. +++ *** New functions `face-attribute-relative-p' and `merge-face-attribute' help with handling relative face attributes. +++ *** The priority of faces in an :inherit attribute face list is reversed. If a face contains an :inherit attribute with a list of faces, earlier faces in the list override later faces in the list; in previous releases of Emacs, the order was the opposite. This change was made so that :inherit face lists operate identically to face lists in text `face' properties. --- *** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil.. ** Font-Lock changes: +++ *** New special text property `font-lock-face'. This property acts like the `face' property, but it is controlled by M-x font-lock-mode. It is not, strictly speaking, a builtin text property. Instead, it is implemented inside font-core.el, using the new variable `char-property-alias-alist'. +++ *** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'. **** the FACENAME returned in `font-lock-keywords' can be a list of the form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP2 VAL2 ...) so you can set other properties than `face'. **** `font-lock-extra-managed-props' can be set to make sure those extra properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock. --- *** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'. If a piece of text with that property gets contextually refontified (see `jit-lock-defer-contextually'), then all of that text will be refontified. This is useful when the syntax of a textual element depends on text several lines further down (and when `font-lock-multiline' is not appropriate to solve that problem). For example in Perl: s{ foo }{ bar }e Adding/removing the last `e' changes the `bar' from being a piece of text to being a piece of code, so you'd put a `jit-lock-defer-multiline' property over the second half of the command to force (deferred) refontification of `bar' whenever the `e' is added/removed. ** Major mode mechanism changes: +++ *** `set-auto-mode' now gives the interpreter magic line (if present) precedence over the file name. Likewise an ` ) (if (boundp 'foo) form won't produce a warning if it's not defined as a function, and in the second case, using `foo' as a variable won't produce a warning if it's unbound. The test must be in exactly one of the above forms (after macro expansion), but such tests can be nested. Note that `when' and `unless' expand to `if', but `cond' doesn't. *** `(featurep 'xemacs)' is treated by the compiler as nil. This helps to avoid noisy compiler warnings in code meant to run under both Emacs and XEmacs and can sometimes make the result significantly more efficient. Since byte code from recent versions of XEmacs won't generally run in Emacs and vice versa, this optimization doesn't lose you anything. *** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in Lisp files is now obeyed. --- *** When a Lisp file uses CL functions at run-time, compiling the file now issues warnings about these calls, unless the file performs (require 'cl) when loaded. ** Frame operations: +++ *** New functions `frame-current-scroll-bars' and `window-current-scroll-bars'. These functions return the current locations of the vertical and horizontal scroll bars in a frame or window. +++ *** The new function `modify-all-frames-parameters' modifies parameters for all (existing and future) frames. +++ *** The new frame parameter `tty-color-mode' specifies the mode to use for color support on character terminal frames. Its value can be a number of colors to support, or a symbol. See the Emacs Lisp Reference manual for more detailed documentation. +++ *** When using non-toolkit scroll bars with the default width, the `scroll-bar-width' frame parameter value is nil. ** Mule changes: +++ *** Already true in Emacs 21.1, but not emphasized clearly enough: Multibyte buffers can now faithfully record all 256 character codes from 0 to 255. As a result, most of the past reasons to use unibyte buffers no longer exist. We only know of three reasons to use them now: 1. If you prefer to use unibyte text all of the time. 2. For reading files into temporary buffers, when you want to avoid the time it takes to convert the format. 3. For binary files where format conversion would be pointless and wasteful. --- *** `set-buffer-file-coding-system' now takes an additional argument, NOMODIFY. If it is non-nil, it means don't mark the buffer modified. +++ *** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system for it. (If the coding system is detected incorrectly for a specific file, you can put a `coding:' tags to override it.) --- *** The new function `merge-coding-systems' fills in unspecified aspects of one coding system from another coding system. --- *** New coding system property `mime-text-unsuitable' indicates that the coding system's `mime-charset' is not suitable for MIME text parts, e.g. utf-16. +++ *** New function `decode-coding-inserted-region' decodes a region as if it is read from a file without decoding. --- *** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'. --- *** New function `quail-find-key' returns a list of keys to type in the current input method to input a character. ** Mode line changes: +++ *** New function `format-mode-line'. This returns the mode line or header line of the selected (or a specified) window as a string with or without text properties. +++ *** The new mode-line construct `(:propertize ELT PROPS...)' can be used to add text properties to mode-line elements. +++ *** The new `%i' and `%I' constructs for `mode-line-format' can be used to display the size of the accessible part of the buffer on the mode line. +++ *** Mouse-face on mode-line (and header-line) is now supported. ** Menu manipulation changes: --- *** To manipulate the File menu using easy-menu, you must specify the proper name "file". In previous Emacs versions, you had to specify "files", even though the menu item itself was changed to say "File" several versions ago. --- *** The dummy function keys made by easy-menu are now always lower case. If you specify the menu item name "Ada", for instance, it uses `ada' as the "key" bound by that key binding. This is relevant only if Lisp code looks for the bindings that were made with easy-menu. --- *** `easy-menu-define' now allows you to use nil for the symbol name if you don't need to give the menu a name. If you install the menu into other keymaps right away (MAPS is non-nil), it usually doesn't need to have a name. ** Operating system access: +++ *** The new primitive `get-internal-run-time' returns the processor run time used by Emacs since start-up. +++ *** Functions `user-uid' and `user-real-uid' now return floats if the user UID doesn't fit in a Lisp integer. Function `user-full-name' accepts a float as UID parameter. +++ *** New function `locale-info' accesses locale information. --- *** On MS Windows, locale-coding-system is used to interact with the OS. The Windows specific variable w32-system-coding-system, which was formerly used for that purpose is now an alias for locale-coding-system. --- *** New function `redirect-debugging-output' can be used to redirect debugging output on the stderr file handle to a file. ** Miscellaneous: +++ *** A number of hooks have been renamed to better follow the conventions: `find-file-hooks' to `find-file-hook', `find-file-not-found-hooks' to `find-file-not-found-functions', `write-file-hooks' to `write-file-functions', `write-contents-hooks' to `write-contents-functions', `x-lost-selection-hooks' to `x-lost-selection-functions', `x-sent-selection-hooks' to `x-sent-selection-functions', `delete-frame-hook' to `delete-frame-functions'. In each case the old name remains as an alias for the moment. +++ *** local-write-file-hooks is marked obsolete Use the LOCAL arg of `add-hook'. --- *** New function `x-send-client-message' sends a client message when running under X. ** GC changes: +++ *** New variables `gc-elapsed' and `gcs-done' provide extra information on garbage collection. +++ *** The normal hook `post-gc-hook' is run at the end of garbage collection. The hook is run with GC inhibited, so use it with care. * New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 22.1 +++ ** The new library button.el implements simple and fast `clickable buttons' in emacs buffers. Buttons are much lighter-weight than the `widgets' implemented by widget.el, and can be used by lisp code that doesn't require the full power of widgets. Emacs uses buttons for such things as help and apropos buffers. --- ** The new library tree-widget.el provides a widget to display a set of hierarchical data as an outline. For example, the tree-widget is well suited to display a hierarchy of directories and files. ** The new library bindat.el provides functions to unpack and pack binary data structures, such as network packets, to and from Lisp data structures. --- ** master-mode.el implements a minor mode for scrolling a slave buffer without leaving your current buffer, the master buffer. It can be used by sql.el, for example: the SQL buffer is the master and its SQLi buffer is the slave. This allows you to scroll the SQLi buffer containing the output from the SQL buffer containing the commands. This is how to use sql.el and master.el together: the variable sql-buffer contains the slave buffer. It is a local variable in the SQL buffer. (add-hook 'sql-mode-hook (function (lambda () (master-mode t) (master-set-slave sql-buffer)))) (add-hook 'sql-set-sqli-hook (function (lambda () (master-set-slave sql-buffer)))) +++ ** The new library benchmark.el does timing measurements on Lisp code. This includes measuring garbage collection time. +++ ** The new library testcover.el does test coverage checking. This is so you can tell whether you've tested all paths in your Lisp code. It works with edebug. The function `testcover-start' instruments all functions in a given file. Then test your code. The function `testcover-mark-all' adds overlay "splotches" to the Lisp file's buffer to show where coverage is lacking. The command `testcover-next-mark' (bind it to a key!) will move point forward to the next spot that has a splotch. Normally, a red splotch indicates the form was never completely evaluated; a brown splotch means it always evaluated to the same value. The red splotches are skipped for forms that can't possibly complete their evaluation, such as `error'. The brown splotches are skipped for forms that are expected to always evaluate to the same value, such as (setq x 14). For difficult cases, you can add do-nothing macros to your code to help out the test coverage tool. The macro `noreturn' suppresses a red splotch. It is an error if the argument to `noreturn' does return. The macro `1value' suppresses a brown splotch for its argument. This macro is a no-op except during test-coverage -- then it signals an error if the argument actually returns differing values. * Installation changes in Emacs 21.3 ** Support for GNU/Linux on little-endian MIPS and on IBM S390 has been added. * Changes in Emacs 21.3 ** The obsolete C mode (c-mode.el) has been removed to avoid problems with Custom. ** UTF-16 coding systems are available, encoding the same characters as mule-utf-8. ** There is a new language environment for UTF-8 (set up automatically in UTF-8 locales). ** Translation tables are available between equivalent characters in different Emacs charsets -- for instance `e with acute' coming from the Latin-1 and Latin-2 charsets. User options `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' and `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' respectively turn on translation between ISO 8859 character sets (`unification') on encoding (e.g. writing a file) and decoding (e.g. reading a file). Note that `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' is useful and safe, but `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' can cause text to change when you read it and write it out again without edits, so it is not generally advisable. By default `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' is turned on. ** In Emacs running on the X window system, the default value of `selection-coding-system' is now `compound-text-with-extensions'. If you want the old behavior, set selection-coding-system to compound-text, which may be significantly more efficient. Using compound-text-with-extensions seems to be necessary only for decoding text from applications under XFree86 4.2, whose behavior is actually contrary to the compound text specification. * Installation changes in Emacs 21.2 ** Support for BSD/OS 5.0 has been added. ** Support for AIX 5.1 was added. * Changes in Emacs 21.2 ** Emacs now supports compound-text extended segments in X selections. X applications can use `extended segments' to encode characters in compound text that belong to character sets which are not part of the list of approved standard encodings for X, e.g. Big5. To paste selections with such characters into Emacs, use the new coding system compound-text-with-extensions as the value of selection-coding-system. ** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay' were changed. ** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode. ** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode, instead of using default-major-mode. ** The new option `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' causes Info to behave like the stand-alone Info reader (from the GNU Texinfo package) as far as motion between nodes and their subnodes is concerned. If it is t (the default), Emacs behaves as before when you type SPC in a menu: it visits the subnode pointed to by the first menu entry. If this option is nil, SPC scrolls to the end of the current node, and only then goes to the first menu item, like the stand-alone reader does. This change was already in Emacs 21.1, but wasn't advertised in the NEWS. * Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.2 ** The meanings of scroll-up-aggressively and scroll-down-aggressively have been interchanged, so that the former now controls scrolling up, and the latter now controls scrolling down. ** The variable `compilation-parse-errors-filename-function' can be used to transform filenames found in compilation output. * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra charsets in this release. ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added. ** Support for LynxOS has been added. ** There are new configure options associated with the support for images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure' to list them. ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any necessary changes to unexec. ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available. ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available. ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary. ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement all of the new display features described below. The port currently lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the description of aspects specific to the Mac. ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the new display features described below. * Changes in Emacs 21.1 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine. The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height. Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in the text. ** Emacs has a new face implementation. The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family, height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify. These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together specify a font. Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts. These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found under Lisp changes, below. ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames. Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors. Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it. Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored on terminals. The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now supported on character terminals. Emacs automatically remaps all X-style color specifications to one of the colors supported by the terminal. This means you could have the same color customizations that work both on a windowed display and on a TTY or when Emacs is invoked with the -nw option. ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X. ** Sound support Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes' to enable sound support. ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate. If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum minibuffer window size by setting the following variables: - User option: max-mini-window-height Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it specifies a number of lines. Default is 0.25. - User option: resize-mini-windows How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk again. Default is `grow-only'. ** LessTif support. Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see ). You will need version 0.92.26, or later. ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog. When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is non-nil. ** File selection dialog on MS-Windows is supported. When a file is visited by clicking File->Open, the MS-Windows version now pops up a standard file selection dialog where you can select a file to visit. File->Save As also pops up that dialog. ** Toolkit scroll bars. Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring Emacs. When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take `s/freebsd.h' as an example. Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO', add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file. The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO. This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's imake configuration file contains the necessary information. Since Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually. ** Tool bar support. Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome icons will be used. To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons for specific modes (with copyright assignments). ** Tooltips. Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'. Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated, variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the tooltip display in the group `tooltip'. ** Automatic Hscrolling Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be customized. If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc. ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by customizing face `fringe'. ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'. In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of the window to be partially obscured.) The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, is now deprecated. However, setting it to nil will cause the `mode-line' face to be ignored, and mode-lines to be drawn using the default text face. ** Mouse-sensitive mode line. Different parts of the mode line have been made mouse-sensitive on all systems which support the mouse. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or in the tooltip window if you have enabled one. Currently, the following actions have been defined: - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line goes to the next buffer. - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name goes to the previous buffer. - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or `*') toggles the status. - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu. ** Hourglass pointer Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'. ** Blinking cursor M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in the group `cursor'. ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'. This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification. See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more details. Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't have to do anything to activate it. ** The default binding of the Delete key has changed. The new user-option `normal-erase-is-backspace' can be set to determine the effect of the Delete and Backspace function keys. On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward. On keyboards which either have only one key (usually labeled DEL), or two keys DEL and BS which produce the same effect, the option's value is set to nil, and these keys delete backward. If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting on a text-only terminal if you don't have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys. Programmatically, you can call function normal-erase-is-backspace-mode to toggle the behavior of the Delete and Backspace keys. ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a buffer by default. ** The and keys now move to the beginning or end of the current line, respectively. C- and C- move to the beginning and end of the buffer. ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is signaled. ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer. ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change this behavior. The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs's byte compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let Emacs dump core. ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus. When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif. ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus. ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set using that menu. ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace. When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the whitespace. ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes all frames except the selected one. ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting. ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window), so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled. This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option `Info-use-header-line'. ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex', `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included. ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available. ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in `fr-drdref.tex'. ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu. ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable through Customize. You can no longer use `M-x customize-variable' to customize `load-path' because it now contains a version-dependent component. You can still use `add-to-list' and `setq' to customize this variable in your `~/.emacs' init file or to modify it from any Lisp program in general. ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at point in a pop-up window. ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse) under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'. The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount' determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled. ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory. (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.) You can customize `auto-save-list-file-prefix' to change this location. ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively. ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights. ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'. ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is non-nil. ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a file that is already visited under a different name. ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size. ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name and displays information about that. ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination. This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'. ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'. ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment, the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding. Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system. ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have been removed -- use `set-language-environment'. ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding system for keyboard input. ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs' coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is recommended not to change it except for the special case that you always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1 RET C-x C-f filename RET. ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'. ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and displays all characters in that character set. ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8. ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup. ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'. Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts. There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only) and Polish `slash'. ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'. These new environments mainly select appropriate translations of the tutorial. ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs Lisp Coding Convention". new command old-binding --- ------- ----------- f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2 ** There are new Leim input methods. New input methods "turkish-postfix", "turkish-alt-postfix", "greek-mizuochi", "TeX", and "greek-babel" are now part of the Leim package. ** The rule of input method "slovak" is slightly changed. Now the rules for translating "q" and "Q" to "`" (backquote) are deleted, thus typing them inserts "q" and "Q" respectively. Rules for translating "=q", "+q", "=Q", and "+Q" to "`" are also deleted. Now, to input "`", you must type "=q". ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this on. ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill, defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region commenting with the variable `comment-style'. ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive. ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines on the display using several methods - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames. - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is equivalent to specifying the frame parameter. - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line. - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only. ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c, does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window. ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups, typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory. ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities. ** New X resources recognized *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode is useful for debugging X problems. Example: emacs.synchronous: true *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class, and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid visual class names are TrueColor PseudoColor DirectColor StaticColor GrayScale StaticGray Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e. `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same meaning. The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes supported on your display, and which depths they have. If `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default visual. Example: emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap', specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized resource values are `true' or `on'. Example: emacs.privateColormap: true ** Faces and frame parameters. There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'. Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color' sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'. Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the `default' face and vice versa. ** New face `menu'. The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus. ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction. The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies the screen gamma of a frame's display. PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2). The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class `ScreenGamma'. ** Tabs and variable-width text. Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears. Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts. ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin". emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the LessTif/Motif one. *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in LessTif and Motif. ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X. As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value. ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi and Less). This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'. ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method. When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that fraction of the window's height from the top of the window. When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window. ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer, C-u m RET or C-u g RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special buffers. ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history. ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing `directory-abbrev-alist'. ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership, even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them. The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature. ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces, notably at the end of lines. All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way. ** The function `replace-rectangle' is an alias for `string-rectangle'. ** The new command M-x string-insert-rectangle is like `string-rectangle', but inserts text instead of replacing it. ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated after each match to get the replacement text. ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets you edit the replacement string. ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB' (if you load the library `mailabbrev'), lets you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to lisp-complete-symbol. ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value. ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it. ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus displayed by Emacs now have help strings. -- ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to read mail from the menu etc. ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows. This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now. ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the MS-DOS version of Emacs. ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces the MS-DOS version of Emacs to behave as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons. This comes handy with mice that don't report their number of buttons correctly. One example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons, but clicks on the middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version of Emacs. ** Customize changes *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the `State' menu to add comments, or give a prefix argument to M-x customize-set-variable or M-x customize-set-value. Note that customization comments will cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs. *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the default). *** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it does not allow you to save customizations in your `~/.emacs' init file. This is because saving customizations from such a session would wipe out all the other customizationss you might have on your init file. ** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it does not save disabled and enabled commands for future sessions, to avoid overwriting existing customizations of this kind that are already in your init file. ** New features in evaluation commands *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the new customizable variables eval-expression-print-level, eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error. The default values for the first two of these variables are 12 and 4 respectively, which means that `eval-expression' now prints at most the first 12 members of a list and at most 4 nesting levels deep (if the list is longer or deeper than that, an ellipsis `...' is printed). or on the printed text toggles between an abbreviated printed representation and an unabbreviated one. The default value of eval-expression-debug-on-error is t, so any error during evaluation produces a backtrace. *** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) now loads Edebug and instruments code when called with a prefix argument. ** CC mode changes. Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with current user setups (although it's believed that these incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances). However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this release. *** The hardcoded switch to "java" style in Java mode is gone. CC Mode used to automatically set the style to "java" when Java mode is entered. This has now been removed since it caused too much confusion. However, to keep backward compatibility to a certain extent, the default value for c-default-style now specifies the "java" style for java-mode, but "gnu" for all other modes (as before). So you won't notice the change if you haven't touched that variable. *** New cleanups, space-before-funcall and compact-empty-funcall. Two new cleanups have been added to c-cleanup-list: space-before-funcall causes a space to be inserted before the opening parenthesis of a function call, which gives the style "foo (bar)". compact-empty-funcall causes any space before a function call opening parenthesis to be removed if there are no arguments to the function. It's typically useful together with space-before-funcall to get the style "foo (bar)" and "foo()". *** Some keywords now automatically trigger reindentation. Keywords like "else", "while", "catch" and "finally" have been made "electric" to make them reindent automatically when they continue an earlier statement. An example: for (i = 0; i < 17; i++) if (a[i]) res += a[i]->offset; else Here, the "else" should be indented like the preceding "if", since it continues that statement. CC Mode will automatically reindent it after the "else" has been typed in full, since it's not until then it's possible to decide whether it's a new statement or a continuation of the preceding "if". CC Mode uses Abbrev mode to achieve this, which is therefore turned on by default. *** M-a and M-e now moves by sentence in multiline strings. Previously these two keys only moved by sentence in comments, which meant that sentence movement didn't work in strings containing documentation or other natural language text. The reason it's only activated in multiline strings (i.e. strings that contain a newline, even when escaped by a '\') is to avoid stopping in the short strings that often reside inside statements. Multiline strings almost always contain text in a natural language, as opposed to other strings that typically contain format specifications, commands, etc. Also, it's not that bothersome that M-a and M-e misses sentences in single line strings, since they're short anyway. *** Support for autodoc comments in Pike mode. Autodoc comments for Pike are used to extract documentation from the source, like Javadoc in Java. Pike mode now recognize this markup in comment prefixes and paragraph starts. *** The comment prefix regexps on c-comment-prefix may be mode specific. When c-comment-prefix is an association list, it specifies the comment line prefix on a per-mode basis, like c-default-style does. This change came about to support the special autodoc comment prefix in Pike mode only. *** Better handling of syntactic errors. The recovery after unbalanced parens earlier in the buffer has been improved; CC Mode now reports them by dinging and giving a message stating the offending line, but still recovers and indent the following lines in a sane way (most of the time). An "else" with no matching "if" is handled similarly. If an error is discovered while indenting a region, the whole region is still indented and the error is reported afterwards. *** Lineup functions may now return absolute columns. A lineup function can give an absolute column to indent the line to by returning a vector with the desired column as the first element. *** More robust and warning-free byte compilation. Although this is strictly not a user visible change (well, depending on the view of a user), it's still worth mentioning that CC Mode now can be compiled in the standard ways without causing trouble. Some code have also been moved between the subpackages to enhance the modularity somewhat. Thanks to Martin Buchholz for doing the groundwork. *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t. This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't have to bother. Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session. If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java" by default) to override the global settings made by the user. *** New initialization procedure for the style system. When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific settings would override the global settings. This change makes it possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file. By default, the global value of every style variable is the new special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described above. Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only* when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style --- then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the function documentation for more info. The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users, especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well, such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set. (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.) **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable. This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior. This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the style system. **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior. In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back as far as possible. *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling. CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new chapter about this in the manual. **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations. The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses. **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix. This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings. **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode. This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments. It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/). A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use inside CC Mode. Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/ cc-mode/). **** The variables `c-hanging-comment-starter-p' and `c-hanging-comment-ender-p', which controlled how comment starters and enders were filled, are not used anymore. The new version of the function `c-fill-paragraph' keeps the comment starters and enders as they were before the filling. **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling. The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string literals. **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break. It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to this function. *** Fixes to IDL mode. It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword. Thanks to Eric Eide. *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style. It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when opening braces hangs and when they don't. **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block. *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block. See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates, and is used by default to line up continued template arguments. *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in the column specified by comment-column. *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments. In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally don't want CC Mode to change the indentation. *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup arguments. *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings. *** More preprocessor directive movement functions. c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional. c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don Provan). *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations. ** Dired changes *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default is, delete only empty directories. *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not copy directories recursively. *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?' in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with the difference that the command will be run on each file individually. *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a') replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or directory. *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `y') shows a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on. This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as accurate or inaccurate as it is. *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R' from ls switches. *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename, which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single source file, not when operating on multiple marked files. ** Gnus changes. The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment, internationalization and mail-fetching. *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone. If you used procmail like in (setq nnmail-use-procmail t) (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail) (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/") (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in") this now has changed to (setq mail-sources '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/" :suffix ".in"))) More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods -> Getting Mail -> Mail Sources *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details. Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no longer work; remove them and use the native facilities. The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier. *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is now just a compatibility layer. *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in Gnus facilities. *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be called to position point. *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in summary buffers and NOV files. *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added. *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a subtly different manner. *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with ever-changing layouts. *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap. *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support. ** Changes in Texinfo mode. *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo macros Key binding Macro ------------------------- C-c C-c C-s @strong C-c C-c C-e @emph C-c C-c u @uref C-c C-c q @quotation C-c C-c m @email C-c C-o @ ... @end M-RET @item *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context. ** Changes in Outline mode. There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents. ** Changes to Emacs Server *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which buffers to kill, as before. Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client, i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in this way. ** Both emacsclient and Emacs itself now accept command line options of the form +LINE:COLUMN in addition to +LINE. ** Changes to Show Paren mode. *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property. The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to use. Default is 1000. ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes). ** Changes to hideshow.el *** Generalized block selection and traversal A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings), and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'. *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of the open block. *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of the normal block-hiding function. *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed. *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions, roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation for `hs-minor-mode'. *** The variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' has been removed, and hideshow.el now always behaves as if this variable were set to t. ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions. **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current buffer. *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in a log file. *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil. Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's version number is performed based on regular expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file. *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting. ** Changes to cmuscheme *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el. ** Changes in Font Lock *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode. *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults. *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose the face used for each string/comment. *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'. Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code". ** Changes to Shell mode *** The `shell' command now accepts an optional argument to specify the buffer to use, which defaults to "*shell*". When used interactively, a non-default buffer may be specified by giving the `shell' command a prefix argument (causing it to prompt for the buffer name). ** Comint (subshell) changes These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc. *** Comint now by default interprets some carriage-control characters. Comint now removes CRs from CR LF sequences, and treats single CRs and BSs in the output in a way similar to a terminal (by deleting to the beginning of the line, or deleting the previous character, respectively). This is achieved by adding `comint-carriage-motion' to the `comint-output-filter-functions' hook by default. *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'. *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers. *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer. The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer. *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features, see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'. *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s') saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix argument, it appends to the file. *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for compatibility. *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input ring (history). *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#". ** Changes to Rmail mode *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default, `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself as correspondent. Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a regexp matching your mail addresses. *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask for confirmation with yes-or-no-p. *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg, like `j'. *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a digest message. *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies in which folder to put messages automatically. *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly due to missing or malformed "charset=" header. ** The new user-option `mail-envelope-from' can be used to specify an envelope-from address different from user-mail-address. ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to use the -f option when sending mail. ** The Rmail command `o' (`rmail-output-to-rmail-file') now writes the current message in the internal `emacs-mule' encoding, rather than in the encoding taken from the variable `buffer-file-coding-system'. This allows to save messages whose characters cannot be safely encoded by the buffer's coding system, and makes sure the message will be displayed correctly when you later visit the target Rmail file. If you want your Rmail files be encoded in a specific coding system other than `emacs-mule', you can customize the variable `rmail-file-coding-system' to set its value to that coding system. ** Changes to TeX mode *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to `latex-mode'. *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm. *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs. *** Added support for outline-minor-mode. ** Changes to RefTeX mode *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys. Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries can be edited from that buffer. *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or `A' to use all marked entries). *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used. *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &' in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has been cited. ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings. The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `(' in column 1 are always made leaves. ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks) has the following new features: *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns. *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it defaults to 1. ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in file names. ** Ispell changes *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it spell-checks the current buffer. *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been added. *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling correction is made and re-checked. *** Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definitions have been added. *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some cases. *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict on syntax errors. *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the end of the buffer. *** Spell checking now works in the MS-DOS version of Emacs. ** Makefile mode changes *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'. *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when Fontlock mode is active. ** Isearch changes *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history, so that searches can be resumed. *** In Isearch mode, C-M-s and C-M-r are now bound like C-s and C-r, respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys that started the search. *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current selection into the search string rather than giving an error. *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search. Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to `secondary-selection'. The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search. Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its usual snappy response. If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'. ** VC Changes VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism to enable and disable support for particular version systems has changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file, each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the file is registered in that backend. When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen. As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete. The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS where it doesn't make sense.) The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now. *** General Changes The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding checks are always done now. VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control operations. `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'. `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'. `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'. The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into the working file (``merge news''). The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work downwards. *** Multiple Backends VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your local RCS archives. To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example) should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote'' backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.) You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the current revision number from the more remote backend. If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally. After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file. *** Changes for CVS There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC queries the repository just as often as it does for local files. If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~ (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other, the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS, since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file name.) If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit. If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an entire directory tree. The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are "watched" by other developers.) The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update', starting at the given directory. *** Lisp Changes in VC VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library, you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'. ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs. See etc/edt-user.doc for more information. ** New modes and packages *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode' automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when the default is not applicable. *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines, rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \. Features are: - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is drawn, like this: | \ / --+-- X | / \ - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line you are drawing. - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight) poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >. - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by flood-filling. - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa. - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can also do without the mouse. - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio, the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round. - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented: lines straight-lines rectangles squares poly-lines straight poly-lines ellipses circles text (see-thru) text (overwrite) spray-can setting size for spraying vaporize line vaporize lines erase characters erase rectangles Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while drawing. It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto . - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this can be turned off). *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it. It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell, all within the scope of your Emacs process. *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working on certain projects. *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches of interactively entered regexps. For example, M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting. Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match. *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when Emacs is idle. *** The new package tildify.el allows to add hard spaces or other text fragments in accordance with the current major mode. *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however. *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el package which allows different styles of comment-region and should be more robust while offering the same functionality. `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary. *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a separate Texinfo file. *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument) provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to enter check-in log messages. *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages without invoking external programs. The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available. The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does. *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback. The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing. Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a single step. On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp contains such to get feedback about their respective limits. *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without actually modifying content of a buffer. *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in PostScript. Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc. The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements: ; comment (until end of line) A non-terminal "C" terminal ?C? special $A default non-terminal $"C" default terminal $?C? default special A = B. production (A is the header and B the body) C D sequence (C occurs before D) C | D alternative (C or D occurs) A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal) n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times) (C) group (expression C is grouped together) [C] optional (C may or not occurs) C+ one or more occurrences of C {C}+ one or more occurrences of C {C}* zero or more occurrences of C {C} zero or more occurrences of C C / D equivalent to: C {D C}* {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}* {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*] {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*] Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it. *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions, determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the equal signs of assignments. *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'. *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a buffer menu with this package. See the Custom group `bs'. *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp. *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators, and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool which answers different needs. *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode to be enabled. *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS. *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game. *** hl-line.el provides `hl-line-mode', a minor mode to highlight the current line in the current buffer. It also provides `global-hl-line-mode' to provide the same behavior in all buffers. *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties. Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground and background colors. *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object Pascal) language. *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on the text at point. *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases. *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures. *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus whitespace in a file. *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out / uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu. *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle. Here is an example of columns: horse apple bus dog pineapple car EXTRA porcupine strawberry airplane Doing the following settings: (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ") (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]") (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ") (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t") Selecting the lines above and typing: M-x delimit-columns-region It results: [ horse , apple , bus , ] [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ] [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ] delim-col has the following options: delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted before all columns. delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted between each column. delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted after all columns. delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates each column. delim-col has the following commands: delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region. delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle. *** Recentf mode maintains a menu for visiting files that were operated on recently. User option recentf-menu-filter specifies a menu filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent file list can be displayed: - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules. - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending. - showing paths relative to the current default-directory The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to dynamically change the menu appearance. *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header text. *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't specific to Message mode. *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'. *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user interface to access directory servers using different directory protocols. It has a separate manual. *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files for Autoconf, selected automatically. *** windmove.el provides moving between windows. *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the minibuffer with completion. *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration with the diary features. *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting. *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto Fill mode. *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning they can be profiled, debugged, etc. *** antlr-mode is a new major mode for editing ANTLR grammar files. It is automatically turned on for files whose names have the extension `.g'. ** Changes in sort.el The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0' as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default numeric base. ** Changes to Ange-ftp *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.) *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that. *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which output ^M at the end of lines. ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor mode `iswitchb-mode'. ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore. If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with `(msb-mode 1)'. ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom group. ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values are recognized: `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space; `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces; `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines; nil -- just delete one character. Default value is `untabify'. [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.] ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face symbol, not double-quoted. ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline, profile, rnews, rnewspost, and sc. Their implementations have been moved to lisp/obsolete. ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el. To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the `auto-compression-mode' command. ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME, and `browse-url-kde' can be chosen for invoking the KDE browser. ** The user-option `browse-url-new-window-p' has been renamed to `browse-url-new-window-flag'. ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode. ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia. ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode, use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a new command M-x strokes-list-strokes. ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer. ** Hexl mode allows to insert non-ASCII characters. The non-ASCII characters are encoded using the same encoding as the file you are visiting in Hexl mode. ** Shell script mode changes. Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style. ** Etags changes. *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c. *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out. This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains a regular expression. The manual contains details. *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function declarations when given the --declarations option. *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator. *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or `template' keywords. *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels. *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and types. *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged. *** In Java, tags are created for "interface". *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs are now tagged. *** In makefiles, tags the targets. *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local variables are tagged. *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags. *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is for PSWrap. ** Changes in etags.el *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default is to use the same setting as case-fold-search. *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions. If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist, obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used. TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH. FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol. A useful example value for this variable might be something like: '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray) ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray) ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray)) *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos. *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer. *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself. If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c", "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name, point will go to the beginning of the file. *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files. *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring. ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings. ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'. ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file. ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps' containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular expression from that list, are not checked. ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files. When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file, and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert the buffer, just like for the local files. ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer. ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now displays local abbrevs, only. ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping paragraphs filled as you modify them. ** The variable `double-click-fuzz' specifies how much the mouse may be moved between clicks that are recognized as a pair. Its value is measured in pixels. ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files to be visited as images. ** Two new user-options `grep-command' and `grep-find-command' were added to compile.el. ** Withdrawn packages *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions. *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed. *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed. * Incompatible Lisp changes There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference. See the sections below for details. ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties. Use `copy-sequence' to copy the string, then use `set-text-properties' to remove the properties of the copy. ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability) may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from these properties are active. ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges may affect some code. ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might make a difference to some code. ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which operates on the minibuffer. ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic' cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results). Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in the buffer as multibyte characters. Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only appropriate for reading truly binary files. ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead. ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as long promised. So does any code that uses derivatives of `concat', such as `mapconcat'. ** The function base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte string. ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21. ** The variable `directory-sep-char' is slated for removal. Not really a change (yet), but a projected one that you should be aware of: The variable `directory-sep-char' is deprecated, and should not be used. It was always ignored on GNU/Linux and Unix systems and on MS-DOS, but the MS-Windows port tried to support it by adapting the behavior of certain primitives to the value of this variable. It turned out that such support cannot be reliable, so it was decided to remove this variable in the near future. Lisp programs are well advised not to set it to anything but '/', because any different value will not have any effect when support for this variable is removed. * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual, (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.) ** Function assq-delete-all replaces function assoc-delete-all. ** The new function animate-string, from lisp/play/animate.el allows the animated display of strings. ** The new function `interactive-form' can be used to obtain the interactive form of a function. ** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies between custom options. Example: (defcustom default-input-method nil "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string). This is the input method activated automatically by the command `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])." :group 'mule :type '(choice (const nil) string) :set-after '(current-language-environment)) This specifies that default-input-method should be set after current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears first in a custom-set-variables statement. ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated (signal or normal termination). ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements from a list are now available without requiring the CL package. ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights. ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font. ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum". ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame being deleted. ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg. ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed. If a range in a regular expression or the arg of skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's charset. ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the message. ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an expression with auto-compression-mode enabled. ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced with the more general `:mask' property. ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's. ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a backslash. ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs is running in batch mode. For example, (message "%s" (read t)) will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result to standard output. ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list', `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional. ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer' will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new frame or window. ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences were added - Function: remove ELT SEQ Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'. - Function: remq ELT LIST Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The comparison is done with `eq'. ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings. ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table has been changed: WEAK can now have new values `key-or-value' and `key-and-value', in addition to `nil', `key', `value', and `t'. ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary. ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string. ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the function was declared obsolete. ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is retained as an alias). ** Easy-menu's :filter now takes the unconverted form of the menu and the result is automatically converted to Emacs' form. ** The new function `window-list' has been defined - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window, even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t means never include the minibuffer window. ** There's a new function `get-window-with-predicate' defined as follows - Function: get-window-with-predicate PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT Return a window satisfying PREDICATE. This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows', calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is returned. Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the minibuffer even if it is active. Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts, `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window. ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument. ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above. ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames. ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames. ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames. If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame. Anything else means restrict to the selected frame. ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed. ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x. Default value is nil. ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil, meaning no limit. ** The new user option `line-number-display-limit-width' controls the maximum width of lines in a buffer for which Emacs displays line numbers in the mode line. The default is 200. ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified, ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument list of a primitive. ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps. ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property. This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather than replacing the local map. ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead. ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'. ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as promised long ago. ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float. ** The new variable auto-coding-regexp-alist specifies coding systems for reading specific files, analogous to auto-coding-alist, but patterns are checked against file contents instead of file names. * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features) ** The new package rx.el provides an alternative sexp notation for regular expressions. - Function: rx-to-string SEXP Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation. - Macro: rx SEXP Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation. The following are valid subforms of regular expressions in sexp notation. STRING matches string STRING literally. CHAR matches character CHAR literally. `not-newline' matches any character except a newline. . `anything' matches any character `(any SET)' matches any character in SET. SET may be a character or string. Ranges of characters can be specified as `A-Z' in strings. '(in SET)' like `any'. `(not (any SET))' matches any character not in SET `line-start' matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a line in the text being matched `line-end' is similar to `line-start' but matches only at the end of a line `string-start' matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the string being matched against. `string-end' matches the empty string, but only at the end of the string being matched against. `buffer-start' matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the buffer being matched against. `buffer-end' matches the empty string, but only at the end of the buffer being matched against. `point' matches the empty string, but only at point. `word-start' matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a word. `word-end' matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word. `word-boundary' matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a word. `(not word-boundary)' matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a word. `digit' matches 0 through 9. `control' matches ASCII control characters. `hex-digit' matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F. `blank' matches space and tab only. `graphic' matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars, space, and DEL. `printing' matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars and DEL. `alphanumeric' matches letters and digits. (But at present, for multibyte characters, it matches anything that has word syntax.) `letter' matches letters. (But at present, for multibyte characters, it matches anything that has word syntax.) `ascii' matches ASCII (unibyte) characters. `nonascii' matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters. `lower' matches anything lower-case. `upper' matches anything upper-case. `punctuation' matches punctuation. (But at present, for multibyte characters, it matches anything that has non-word syntax.) `space' matches anything that has whitespace syntax. `word' matches anything that has word syntax. `(syntax SYNTAX)' matches a character with syntax SYNTAX. SYNTAX must be one of the following symbols. `whitespace' (\\s- in string notation) `punctuation' (\\s.) `word' (\\sw) `symbol' (\\s_) `open-parenthesis' (\\s() `close-parenthesis' (\\s)) `expression-prefix' (\\s') `string-quote' (\\s\") `paired-delimiter' (\\s$) `escape' (\\s\\) `character-quote' (\\s/) `comment-start' (\\s<) `comment-end' (\\s>) `(not (syntax SYNTAX))' matches a character that has not syntax SYNTAX. `(category CATEGORY)' matches a character with category CATEGORY. CATEGORY must be either a character to use for C, or one of the following symbols. `consonant' (\\c0 in string notation) `base-vowel' (\\c1) `upper-diacritical-mark' (\\c2) `lower-diacritical-mark' (\\c3) `tone-mark' (\\c4) `symbol' (\\c5) `digit' (\\c6) `vowel-modifying-diacritical-mark' (\\c7) `vowel-sign' (\\c8) `semivowel-lower' (\\c9) `not-at-end-of-line' (\\c<) `not-at-beginning-of-line' (\\c>) `alpha-numeric-two-byte' (\\cA) `chinse-two-byte' (\\cC) `greek-two-byte' (\\cG) `japanese-hiragana-two-byte' (\\cH) `indian-two-byte' (\\cI) `japanese-katakana-two-byte' (\\cK) `korean-hangul-two-byte' (\\cN) `cyrillic-two-byte' (\\cY) `ascii' (\\ca) `arabic' (\\cb) `chinese' (\\cc) `ethiopic' (\\ce) `greek' (\\cg) `korean' (\\ch) `indian' (\\ci) `japanese' (\\cj) `japanese-katakana' (\\ck) `latin' (\\cl) `lao' (\\co) `tibetan' (\\cq) `japanese-roman' (\\cr) `thai' (\\ct) `vietnamese' (\\cv) `hebrew' (\\cw) `cyrillic' (\\cy) `can-break' (\\c|) `(not (category CATEGORY))' matches a character that has not category CATEGORY. `(and SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)' matches what SEXP1 matches, followed by what SEXP2 matches, etc. `(submatch SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)' like `and', but makes the match accessible with `match-end', `match-beginning', and `match-string'. `(group SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)' another name for `submatch'. `(or SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)' matches anything that matches SEXP1 or SEXP2, etc. If all args are strings, use `regexp-opt' to optimize the resulting regular expression. `(minimal-match SEXP)' produce a non-greedy regexp for SEXP. Normally, regexps matching zero or more occurrences of something are \"greedy\" in that they match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can still match. A non-greedy regexp matches as little as possible. `(maximal-match SEXP)' produce a greedy regexp for SEXP. This is the default. `(zero-or-more SEXP)' matches zero or more occurrences of what SEXP matches. `(0+ SEXP)' like `zero-or-more'. `(* SEXP)' like `zero-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp. `(*? SEXP)' like `zero-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp. `(one-or-more SEXP)' matches one or more occurrences of A. `(1+ SEXP)' like `one-or-more'. `(+ SEXP)' like `one-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp. `(+? SEXP)' like `one-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp. `(zero-or-one SEXP)' matches zero or one occurrences of A. `(optional SEXP)' like `zero-or-one'. `(? SEXP)' like `zero-or-one', but always produces a greedy regexp. `(?? SEXP)' like `zero-or-one', but always produces a non-greedy regexp. `(repeat N SEXP)' matches N occurrences of what SEXP matches. `(repeat N M SEXP)' matches N to M occurrences of what SEXP matches. `(eval FORM)' evaluate FORM and insert result. If result is a string, `regexp-quote' it. `(regexp REGEXP)' include REGEXP in string notation in the result. *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default. *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved restriction to be restored incorrectly. *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer. *** The functions `set-buffer-multibyte', `string-as-multibyte' and `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer or a string if it contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set. *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset eight-bit-graphic. ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables. A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a character set as previously. *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed. They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER. CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset. FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font. *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset registries of character sets are set in the default fontset "fontset-default". *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets. ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character composition is done by a special text property `composition' in buffers and strings. *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite character' which is an independent character with a unique character code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters' have been deleted: composite-char-component, composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule, composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete. The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have also been deleted. *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable `reference-point-alist' for more detail. *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters may differ between buffer and string text. *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END, COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC. *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition' directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string. Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property `composition' from STRING. *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string. *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as obsolete. ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text. ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff', `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF, U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively. Note that the character sets are not yet unified in Emacs, so characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew, etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system. ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added. It provides limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For details, please see the documentation string of this coding system. ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2. ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15' have been introduced. ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic' have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the buffer/string internal representation. Note that to search for eight-bit-graphic characters in a multibyte buffer, the search string must be multibyte, otherwise such characters will be converted to their multibyte equivalent. ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to that offset in the file before writing. ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode). ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer from which the command was issued. ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp', `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp', `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to operate on. ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative to `window-buffer-height'. - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END. The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc. Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max' respectively. If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil. The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters. Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it is currently displayed in some window. ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the argument function's results. ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails. Also, `base64-decode-string' now always returns a unibyte string (in Emacs 20, it returned a multibyte string when the result was a valid multibyte sequence). ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body' header in the list of headers passed to it. ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but ignores differences in case and text representation. ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted as follows: t use the cursor specified for the frame (default) nil don't display a cursor `bar' display a bar cursor with default width (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH others display a box cursor. ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning. ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table' text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'. Example: (string-to-syntax "()") => (4 . 41) ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases other than 10. *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2). INTEGER optionally contains a sign. #b1111 => 15 #b-1111 => -15 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8). #o666 => 438 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16). #xbeef => 48815 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36. #2R-111 => -7 #25rah => 267 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC and isn't a string. ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string. ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience. ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches for a regexp in a string. ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook `mouse-position-function'. ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers that don't fit into a Lisp integer. ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed. Keywords are now always considered constants. ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and returns it. ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector returned by function `recent-keys'. ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function' can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns. Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding C-M-a etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the mode. ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument and is renamed `define-minor-mode'. ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has been performed." When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character, and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done, then the self-inserting character is not inserted. ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument. In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray, and the function's value is nil if it is not found. ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a specified table. (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY) Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is what BODY returns. ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators. Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet). Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\'). ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been removed since it wasn't used by anything. ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required instead of being optional. ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to modify read-only text. ** New functions and variables for locales. The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and time functions like strftime. The new variables `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions. The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions. ** syntax tables now understand nested comments. To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n' modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment start sequences. ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p' because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology. ** New function `propertize' The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct strings with text properties. - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the specified value of that property. Example: (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t) ** push and pop macros. Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols as the place that holds the list to be changed. (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value. (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it (thus altering the value of LISTNAME). ** New dolist and dotimes macros. Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp are now defined in Emacs Lisp. (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...) Execute body once for each element of LIST, using the variable VAR to hold the current element. Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted. (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...) Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0, inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive. Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted. ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period or a sign. [:digit:] matches 0 through 9 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F. [:blank:] matches space and tab only [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars, space, and DEL. [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars and DEL. [:alnum:] matches letters and digits. (But at present, for multibyte characters, it matches anything that has word syntax.) [:alpha:] matches letters. (But at present, for multibyte characters, it matches anything that has word syntax.) [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters. [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters. [:lower:] matches anything lower-case. [:punct:] matches punctuation. (But at present, for multibyte characters, it matches anything that has non-word syntax.) [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax. [:upper:] matches anything upper-case. [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax. ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables. The following functions are defined for hash tables: - Function: make-hash-table ARGS The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments are optional. The following arguments are defined: :test TEST TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'. Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined, it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'. :size SIZE SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65. :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float > 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the old size. Default rehash size is 1.5. :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) / (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8. :weakness WEAK WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables. - Function: makehash &optional TEST Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified. - Function: hash-table-p TABLE Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object. - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and values are shared. - Function: hash-table-count TABLE Returns the number of entries in TABLE. - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE Returns the rehash size of TABLE. - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE. - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE Returns the size of TABLE. - Function: hash-table-test TABLE Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys. - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE Returns the weakness specified for TABLE. - Function: clrhash TABLE Clear TABLE. - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if not found. - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with another value, replace the old value with VALUE. - Function: remhash KEY TABLE Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there. - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two arguments KEY and VALUE. - Function: sxhash OBJ Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ. - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test' of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN). TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same. HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers. Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to be strings that are compared case-insensitively. (defun case-fold-string= (a b) (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t)) (defun case-fold-string-hash (a) (sxhash (upcase a))) (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string= 'case-fold-string-hash)) (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold) ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure. It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents a cons cell which is its own cdr. ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure. If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure. ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it is too short to reach that column. ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made. If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters, perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it. ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument to specify which buffer to return the size of. ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook calendar-move-hook after moving point. ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use temporary-file-directory instead. ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties. ** assq-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the elements of an alist which have a car `eq' to a particular value. ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file. make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error, ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file. ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region' The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists; never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation. If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl', that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call to get an error if the file exists at that time. The error reported is `file-already-exists'. ** Function `format' now handles text properties. Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string. If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the result string. Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result string where arguments appear in the result string. Example: (let ((s1 "hello, %s") (s2 "world")) (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1) (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2) (format s1 s2)) results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end. ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties. Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'. The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic argument in it. (let ((msg "hello, %s!") (arg "world")) (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg) (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg) (message msg arg)) ** Sound support Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver). Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes' to enable sound support. Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the sound to play, before playing the sound. The following sound properties are supported: - `:file FILE' FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be searched relative to `data-directory'. - `:data DATA' DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data may be present, but not both. - `:volume VOLUME' VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range 0..1. This property is optional. - `:device DEVICE' DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the sound. The default device is system-dependent. Other properties are ignored. An alternative interface is called as (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE). ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group. ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being a keyword symbol. ** Changes to garbage collection *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number of live and free strings. *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of strings that have been consed so far. * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes mini-windows. ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil. ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used. ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text. ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an image. - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT). SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame. ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image has a mask bitmap. - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap. FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame. ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image satisfying one of a list of specifications. ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now optional. ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see below). * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs. Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to just display it black instead. This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put a line like (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t) in your `.emacs'. ** New face implementation. Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD font names anymore and face merging now works as expected. *** New faces. Each face can specify the following display attributes: 1. Font family or fontset alias name. 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'. 3. Font height in 1/10pt 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'. 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'. 6. Foreground color. 7. Background color. 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color. 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video. 10. A background stipple, a bitmap. 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color. 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what color. 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance. Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face attributes mentioned above. There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly created frames. A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called `fully-specified'. *** Face merging. The display style of a given character in the text is determined by combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always results in a fully-specified face. *** Face realization. After all face attributes for a character have been determined by merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The realization process maps face attributes to what is physically available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face cache of the frame on which it was realized. Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the character to display because different fonts and encodings are used for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them. Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with statically defined font name patterns in fontsets. In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those > 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for Emacs. Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only. **** Clearing face caches. The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload unused fonts. *** Font selection. Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name. If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed. Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best match for the given face attributes in this font list. Font selection can be influenced by the user. The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries to find a best match for the specified font height, etc. Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face doesn't exist. Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a registry. Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are slightly different. Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts. **** Scalable fonts Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default, since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86 servers. To enable scalable font use, set the variable `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used. Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from that list. Example: (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$")) allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'. *** Functions and variables related to font selection. - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'. If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name. POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font. These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting of the face font sort order. - Function: x-font-family-list Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch. - Variable: font-list-limit Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a matching font. The default is currently 100. *** Setting face attributes. For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and `face-attribute'. Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'. The following attributes are recognized: `:family' VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'', or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*' and `?' are allowed. `:width' VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use. It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed', `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded', `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'. `:height' VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height. `:weight' VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal', `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'. `:slant' VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or `reverse-oblique'. `:foreground', `:background' VALUE must be a color name, a string. `:underline' VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't underline. `:overline' VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't overline. `:strike-through' VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't strike through. `:box' VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name, and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise, VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D box. `:inverse-video' VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil. `:stipple' If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data. The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means explicitly don't use a stipple pattern. For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight', and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name: `:font' Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous versions of Emacs. For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed." Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and `defface'. `:inherit' VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces. *** Face attributes and X resources The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes from X resources: Face attribute X resource class ----------------------------------------------------------------------- :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple or attributeBackgroundPixmap Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont *** Text property `face'. The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face specification or a list of such specifications. Each face specification can be 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face. 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute' for face attribute names. 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is for compatibility with previous Emacs versions. ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals. The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by default. You can get defined colors with a call to `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be used to clear the mapping table. ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type. The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values', and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to modify their color-related behavior. The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for any frame type. ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities. The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p', `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens', `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width', `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under', `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'. The new function `display-images-p' returns non-nil if a particular display can display image files. ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer. This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to. To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the `Inviolable' option. The function `minibuffer-prompt-end' returns the current position of the end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current. Otherwise, it returns `(point-min)'. ** New `field' abstraction in buffers. There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field' property (which can be a text property or an overlay). Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence, forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these functions. Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt. The following functions are defined for operating on fields: - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS. A field is a region of text with the same `field' property. If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the constrained position if that is different. If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is also considered to be `on the boundary'. If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries only in the case where they can still move to the right line. If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored. Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil. - Function: delete-field &optional POS Delete the field surrounding POS. A field is a region of text with the same `field' property. If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS. - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS. A field is a region of text with the same `field' property. If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS. If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned. - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE Return the end of the field surrounding POS. A field is a region of text with the same `field' property. If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS. If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field, then the end of the *following* field is returned. - Function: field-string &optional POS Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string. A field is a region of text with the same `field' property. If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS. - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties. A field is a region of text with the same `field' property. If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS. ** Image support. Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value replaces the display of the characters having that property. If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal area. IMAGE is an image specification. *** Image specifications Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not described below are ignored. The following is a list of properties all image types share. `:ascent ASCENT' ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'. If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height to use for its ascent. If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in. If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and overlays that apply to the image. `:margin MARGIN' MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0. `:relief RELIEF' RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief around an image. `:conversion ALGO' Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss'' edge-detection algorithm to the image. ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown below. (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1 x-1/y x/y x+1/y x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1) The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels, multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum of the factors' absolute values. Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of (1 0 0 0 0 0 9 9 -1) Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of ( 2 -1 0 -1 0 1 0 1 -2) ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks ``disabled''. `:mask MASK' If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the image. If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying `:mask nil'. `:file FILE' Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it, search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property may be present in the image specification. `:data DATA' Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be present in an image specification, but not both. All image types support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA. *** Supported image types **** XBM, image type `xbm'. XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image properties supported are: `:foreground FG' FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground color. `:background BG' BG must be a string specifying the image background color, or nil meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color. XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this case, the image specification must contain the following properties instead of a `:file' property. `:width WIDTH' WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels. `:height HEIGHT' HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels. `:data DATA' DATA must be either 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the bitmap. 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor height may be specified in this case because these are defined in the file. **** XPM, image type `xpm' XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'. Additional image properties supported are: `:color-symbols SYMBOLS' SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color name. XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case, add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property. The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able to display compressed images. **** PBM, image type `pbm' PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for mono images are: `:foreground FG' FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground color. `:background FG' BG must be a string specifying the image background color, or nil meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color. **** JPEG, image type `jpeg' Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg', package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image properties defined. **** TIFF, image type `tiff' Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff', package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image properties defined. **** GIF, image type `gif' Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package `libungif-4.1.0', or later. Additional image properties supported are: `:index INDEX' INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a multi-image GIF file. If INDEX is too large, the image displays as a hollow box. This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs. For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images every 0.1 seconds. (defun show-anim (file max) "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages." (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t)) (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time) (when (= idx max) (setq idx 0)) (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx))) (save-excursion (set-buffer buffer) (goto-char (point-min)) (unless first-time (delete-char 1)) (insert-image img "x")) (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil))) **** PNG, image type `png' Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng', package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image properties defined. **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'. Additional image properties supported are: `:pt-width WIDTH' WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an integer. This is a required property. `:pt-height HEIGHT' HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT must be a integer. This is an required property. `:bounding-box BOX' BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS files. This is an required property. Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See lisp/gs.el. *** Lisp interface. The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types which are supported in the current configuration. Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds. The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all images with `equal' specifications share the same image. *** Simplified image API, image.el The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image' can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to define an image based on available image types. The functions `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a buffer. ** Display margins. Windows can now have margins which are used for special text and images. To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update of the display margins. You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later in this file). ** Help display Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line that have a `help-echo' property. If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is the window in which the help was found. If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the `help-echo' text property was found. If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse. If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the mouse. If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string. For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display. If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string. For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is used as help string. The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area. ** Vertical fractional scrolling. The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels. This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible. The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height. The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be used. (global-set-key [A-down] #'(lambda () (interactive) (set-window-vscroll (selected-window) (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll))))) (global-set-key [A-up] #'(lambda () (interactive) (set-window-vscroll (selected-window) (- (window-vscroll) 0.5))))) ** New hook `fontification-functions'. Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function is called with one argument, POS. At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to. ** Tool bar support. Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar") controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed automatically so that all tool bar items are visible. *** Tool bar item definitions Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)' where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'. CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help' property (see below). BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as binding are currently ignored. The following properties are recognized: `:enable FORM'. FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled or disabled. `:visible FORM' FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed. `:filter FUNCTION' FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is used instead of BINDING to display this item. `:button (TYPE SELECTED)' TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not. `:image IMAGES' IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the meaning of each of the four elements: Index Use when item is ---------------------------------------- 0 enabled and selected 1 enabled and deselected 2 disabled and selected 3 disabled and deselected If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state. `:help HELP-STRING'. Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item. The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the menu bar. The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set buffer-locally to override the global map. *** Tool-bar-related variables. If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger than 1/4 of the frame's size. If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be raised when the mouse moves over them. You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and vertical margins . Default is 1. You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3. *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers. You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on a tool bar item. If (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell] '(menu-item "Shell" shell :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm"))) is the original tool bar item definition, then (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command) makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same item. ** Mode line changes. *** Mouse-sensitive mode line. The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line. 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has a `local-map' text property. 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and that format specifier has a `local-map' property. 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a `local-map' property. The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo' properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an example. *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is evaluated and the result is used as mode line element. *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local variable mode-line-format to nil. *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window. This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top line. The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face `header-line'. The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a position in the header-line. ** Text property `display' The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the `display' property should be a display specification, as described below, or a list or vector containing display specifications. *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas To replace the text having the `display' property with some other text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form STRING as property value. *** Variable width and height spaces To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form STRETCH as property value. The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the properties described below. The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the characters having the `display' property. - :width WIDTH Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number. - :relative-width FACTOR Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the width of that character by FACTOR. - :align-to HPOS Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width. Exactly one of the above properties should be used. - :height HEIGHT Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the normal line height. - :relative-height FACTOR The height of the space is computed as the product of the height of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR. - :ascent ASCENT Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or equal to 100. You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together. *** Images A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces, in the display, the characters having this display specification in their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE as display specification. *** Other display properties - (space-width FACTOR) Specifies that space characters in the text having that property should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an integer or float. - (height HEIGHT) Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger. If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which a font is available counts as a step. If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times as tall as the frame's default font. If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current height as argument. The function should return the new height to use. Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol `height' bound to the current specified font height. - (raise FACTOR) FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the `height' subproperty. *** Conditional display properties All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification has the form `(when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated. During the evaluation, `object' is bound to the string or buffer having the conditional display property; `position' and `buffer-position' are bound to the position within `object' and the buffer position where the display property was found, respectively. Both positions can be different when object is a string. The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to `(when t . SPEC)'. ** New menu separator types. Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used to specify other menu separator types. - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine' No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the separator occurs. - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine' A single line in the menu's foreground color. - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine' A double line in the menu's foreground color. - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine' A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color. - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine' A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color. - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn' A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form displayed for item names consisting of dashes only. - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut' A single line with 3D raised appearance. - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash' A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance. - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash' A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance. - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn' Two lines with 3D sunken appearance. - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut' Two lines with 3D raised appearance. - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash' Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance. - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash' Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance. Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like the corresponding single-line separators. ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors. The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors. Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars, default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the default background is the background color of the frame, and the default foreground is black. The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground' (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class `ScrollBarBackground'). Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource settings for scroll bar colors. ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent display updates from being interrupted when input is pending. ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from the original window start. ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented. ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height. A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height. The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer fixed-width and fixed-height. (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t) A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed' temporarily to nil, for example (let ((window-size-fixed nil)) (enlarge-window 10)) Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically, or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error. ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't support a vertical-bar cursor). * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard input. ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos. ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages. ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not only for character input, but also in incremental search. The exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search. ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has been added. * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added. * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes. ** Not new, but not mentioned before: M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark. * Changes in Emacs 20.4 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el. You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'. Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way. If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file is the one that is used. ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous). Also, you can specify a place to put the error output, separate from the command's regular output. Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name. In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies the buffer name. When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there. ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom, is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs. ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name. ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches now have the same feature as occur and query-replace: if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then they never ignore case. ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a part of the general feature of coding system conversion. If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to the same format that was used in the file before. You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group. ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling. This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected. ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed. The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac). The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos, eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings, control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line format. You can now customize these variables. ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil. ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given windows just big enough to hold the whole contents. ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file doesn't have any effect. ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process, not one per buffer. ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line: (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup) ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el. To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the `auto-show-mode' command. ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then. ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel. ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil. ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode and variable specification, as well as on the first line. ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters. The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc. Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported. IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to `?' on other systems. IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on Unix. Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the current codepage when it starts. ** Mail changes *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime', appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is latin-1: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than sendmail-coding-system and the local value of buffer-file-coding-system. You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing mail. *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters, if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them, Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a list of possible coding systems. ** CC Mode changes *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's docstring for details. *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied lineup functions use this feature currently. *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java. *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines. *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for anonymous classes. *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup function c-lineup-inexpr-block. *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's. c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified). *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default. *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line. *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren) for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed. *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero. *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace. This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that). ** Gnus changes. *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the Gnus manual for the full story. *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft group, which is created automatically. *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header values. *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's. *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message outside the region: `C-c C-v'. *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with `C-u C-c C-c'. *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization. *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit re-highlighting of the article buffer. *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'. *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details. *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file. *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater control over simplification. *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread. *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the limit. *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text. *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'. *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed. If you used this function in your initialization files, you must rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead. *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix `a' forces normal posting method. *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text -- `W d'. *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands' to a non-nil value. *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers. *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer has been added. *** A history of where mails have been split is available. *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'. *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting `gnus-score-thread-simplify'. *** A new function for citing in Message has been added -- `message-cite-original-without-signature'. *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command. *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has been added. *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable. *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command. *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend. *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb. *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated. ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "". *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET. *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'. All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell. *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur* buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular mismatch. ** Changes to RefTeX mode *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys. *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be removed from the label. *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'. *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the customization group `reftex-finding-files'. *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular expressions. *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers. ** New/deleted modes and packages *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'. *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'. *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer changes with a special face. *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el. * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better. This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets, conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters, and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details, check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual. The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim distribution when the config.bat script is run. ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.) ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external program. An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT, and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is ignored, as both programs have no useful switches. ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but was not documented clearly before. ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals. This includes Tetris and Snake. * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position return the position of the beginning or end of the current line. They both accept an optional argument, which has the same meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line. ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing, and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern. ** Changes in the file-attributes function. *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float. It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise. *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two integers. ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that file names and attributes are returned. ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes. It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and returns the result. ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern. ** New functions for base64 conversion: The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported optionally. Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string. ** The new function process-running-child-p will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its terminal to its own child process. ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature: when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent. ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists. ** easymenu.el now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'. :included is an alias for :visible. easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used to move or copy menu entries. ** Multibyte editing changes *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and char-bytes in a loop typically as below: (setq char (sref str idx) idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx))) The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete. If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code: (charset-bytes (char-charset ch)) *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error: Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character across the boundary. *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases: o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and contains 8-bit characters. o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and contains invalid characters. *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct way. *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems. If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line. *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly compose Thai characters in a string. ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as menus should always use the third argument. ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char, read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil. ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases. ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous echo area contents. (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY) ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the requested feature cannot be loaded. ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the foreground color, background color or stipple pattern means to clear out that attribute. ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame. ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the end of with-output-to-temp-buffer. ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on the gap of the current buffer. ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way to convert between character positions and byte positions in the current buffer. ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs. These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check it back in after any modifications have been made. * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path. Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded. Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched. Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower. This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired results. ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago. * Changes in Emacs 20.3 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward, it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition. ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made within the region you originally specified, until either all of them are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that region. In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests selective undo. ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode. The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files, though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started. ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is something that most users not do. ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X. The coding system can make a difference for communication with other applications. C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and pasting operations. ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting `ps-printer-name'. ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor hits a new word. Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not to be confused by TeX commands. You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu of various alternative replacements and actions. Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if flyspell-sort-corrections is nil. Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil. ** Changes in input method usage. Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p respectively. You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion. If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one of the alternatives with Mouse-2. The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'. If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given. If the value is t, extra guidance is always given. If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py. If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is given in the following case: o When you are using a complex input method. o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer. If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice, and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with, setting it to t is helpful. The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method. In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following keys: Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language environment. ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to get /usr/foo//etc/passwd which stands for the file /etc/passwd. Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list. Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list. ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve its owner and group. ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries. ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle contents before inserting the specified string on each line. ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified by the left edge of the rectangle. ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG, increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful for writing keyboard macros. ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories, files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and info. ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%. ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region contents only. ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM says whether to ask for confirmation in this case. ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file literally. If you say no, it signals an error. ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook. Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is inconsistent with Emacs conventions. ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or failure if the command produces no output. ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move the mouse. ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related function and variable names. ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for reading specific files. This has higher priority than file-coding-system-alist. ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed according to the current fontset. ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed. The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and nonascii-insert-offset. For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters. ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning. ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search. ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant command keys. ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions. Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at all variables that have documentation. ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap it should show; the default is 20. Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode, the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole of your input. ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all the customizable options which were changed since that version. Newly added options are included as well. If you don't specify a particular version number argument, then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded. This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the Customize menu. ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command. ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were invoked. ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment. The default is 1. ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block sensibly. ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger. ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make two entries in one day for one file, and combine them. ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically every night. ** Desktop changes *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom. *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'. ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to read and post multi-lingual articles. ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is made invisible again. ** Mail reading and sending changes *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently toggle. *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file, now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if the message has no subject, is stored in the variable rmail-default-body-file. *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use. *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string, it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression is evaluated to insert the signature. *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be especially interested in trying feedmail. feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features provided by feedmail are: **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users); there is also a queue for draft messages **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and be prompted for confirmation **** does smart filling of address headers **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail, /usr/lib/sendmail, and Emacs Lisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new function for something else (10-20 lines of Lisp code). ** Dired changes *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T". *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily run Dired on the directory name at point. *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match for a specified regexp. ** VC Changes *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control conveniently. *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary Dired. VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive listing of all files at or below the given directory which are currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown). You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil, then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i' on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired. All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked. The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command, `* l', to mark all files currently locked. Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output. *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff session to resolve them. Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS uses as well). *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file. If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively, using ediff. ** Changes in Font Lock *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face. ** Frame name display changes *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or when many frames are invisible or iconified. *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames menu. ** Comint (subshell) changes *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this. *** There are new commands in Comint mode. C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history; that is, the line after the last line you got. You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one. C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to send the current line together with the following line, when you send the following line. C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark, which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the previously sent input. C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input; it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input as the search string. *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll automatically in compilation-mode windows. ** C mode changes *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation, and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro definition. *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations. Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu" style is still the default however. *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style. *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer them. They do not have key bindings by default. *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement) and M-e (c-end-of-statement). *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace. *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets makes the style variables local to that buffer only. *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren, c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change. *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default. ** Changes to hippie-expand. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for, which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when expanding dynamically. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'. *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied. ** Changes in BibTeX mode. *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during automatic key generation. This replaces variable bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches against the first word in the title. *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations, bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting. *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert. ** Changes in vcursor.el. *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps. *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the Editing group once the package is loaded. *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior. *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command. ** Ispell changes. *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings are identified by syntax tables in effect. *** Generic region skipping implemented. A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user defined. New applications and improvements made available by this include: o URLs are automatically skipped o EMail message checking is vastly improved. *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals. ** Changes to RefTeX mode RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the section `Optimizations' in the manual. *** New recursive parser. The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new recursive parser scans the individual files. *** Parsing only part of a document. Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t. (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t) *** Storing parsing information in a file. This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use (setq reftex-save-parse-info t) *** Using multiple selection buffers If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t) *** References to external documents. The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )'). The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer. *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default. The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands, and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution. Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly. *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc* buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'. *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes. The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map', `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?' at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out more. *** Support for the varioref package The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref. *** New hooks Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references, and citations are created. These hooks are `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function', `reftex-format-cite-function'. *** Citations outside LaTeX The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details. *** Short context is no longer fontified. The short context in the label menu no longer copies the fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be fontified, use (setq reftex-refontify-context t) ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument. With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of the file name within its directory; it only checks for other directories that contain the same file name. Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present directory. ** New modes and packages *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode. It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer it, but some do not. *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL code. *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move around in a buffer. Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu. *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an established system of notation similar to Chess. *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual. *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and the like. *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to identify recently changed parts of the buffer text. *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize the user option `midnight-mode' to t. *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes. apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc) mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files Platform-specific modes: prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode. Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode. Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started. ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist, and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions. ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language environment. ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the current input method for reading this one event. ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte now control whether to output certain characters as backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not). * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3. ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1) always increases point by 1. The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted. See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters. ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'. Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's default value changed. For example, (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed." :type 'integer :group 'foo :version "20.3") (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group." :version "20.3") If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a `:version' in the top level group. This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command. ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray. However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables to themselves. If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil, this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any values whatever. ** There is a new debugger command, R. It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result in the buffer *Debugger-record*. ** Frame-local variables. You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have local bindings for that variable. These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the parameter name. Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings. Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding, that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active. It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect through a window-local binding would not be very robust. ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns. See the documentation in sregex.el. ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended. The contents of this field are not yet finalized. ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION. If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'. ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead. ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default. The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters empty input. ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names. Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string. ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal, echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments: a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a default password to use if the user enters nothing. ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the place where a break is being considered. If the function returns non-nil, then the line won't be broken there. ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE. If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the end of the window, even if this requires computation. ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME which specifies which frame's buffer list to use. If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list. ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer, holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window was directed to display this buffer. ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in other words, if they would give the same results if passed to set-window-configuration. ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of windows and the choice of buffers to display. ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP). If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist. minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers, and it is meant to be set by major modes. ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string except that it discards all text properties from the result. ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100. ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables. ** Menu changes *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now better supported. The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature; then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar. *** A new format for menu items is supported. In a keymap, a key binding that has the format (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING) defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that starts with the symbol `menu-item'. The format is: (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST) where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list. The supported properties include :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the item is enabled. :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the item should appear in the menu. :filter FILTER-FN FILTER-FN is a function of one argument, which will be REAL-BINDING. It should return a binding to use instead. :keys DESCRIPTION DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with `substitute-command-keys' before it is used. :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent keyboard binding. :key-sequence nil This means that the command normally has no keyboard equivalent. :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used). :button (TYPE . SELECTED) TYPE is :toggle or :radio. SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its value says whether this button is currently selected. Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu. Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported. (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item. ** New event types *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated, which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is: (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA) where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated forward, away from the user. As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows. *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically loaded into Emacs. The format is: (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES) where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames that were dragged and dropped. As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows. ** Changes relating to multibyte characters. *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only; any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte. *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape. *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were in Emacs 19 and before. The function chars-in-string has been deleted. The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'. *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation. This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation will count as two characters using unibyte representation. This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are consistent with the new representation. *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary; however, it makes a difference when you compare strings. The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them using the table nonascii-translation-table. *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings. The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer. *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte. *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte. *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte, so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string. You can specify whether to ignore case or not. *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal. *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the buffer or string being searched. One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular expression [^\0-\177] works for it. *** Structure of coding system changed. All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define your own alias name of a coding system by the function define-coding-system-alias. The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion, pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode, character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter `iso-8859-1'. Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new. The value of this property is a list of character sets which this coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance: (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1) Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode the other character sets and read it back correctly. *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string. This function requires a user interaction. *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of select-safe-coding-system. *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding was done. *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of coding systems used by some specific language environment. *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII characters are found, they now return a list of single element `undecided' or its subsidiaries. *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is converted. *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a coding system for communicating with other X clients. *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words, each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a range of characters. *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a Lisp object is a valid character code or not. *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character in the current buffer at position POS. *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first binding input-method-function to nil. The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by the input method function are not passed to the input method function, not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits. The input method function is not called when reading the second and subsequent events of a key sequence. *** You can customize any language environment by using set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook. The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding. * Changes in Emacs 20.1 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a tree structure. M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values. With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically in your .emacs file.) ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window. You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode. ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'. This makes more space in the mode line for other information. ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it kills the region. The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they delete the character before point, as usual. ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature by setting search-highlight to nil.) ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect, the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the past.) ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs. This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode). TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs. As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode, and is an alias for it. If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph, use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode. ** Scrolling changes *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil. In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line where it started. *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines. *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs recenters the window. ** International character set support (MULE) Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets, including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese, Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs") Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back into any of these coding systems when saving a file. Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used, generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or language, to make it possible to type them. The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377. The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods. You can disable multibyte character support as follows: (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil) Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte characters for their work until they want to change. *** Input methods An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use the same characters can share one input method). Some languages support several input methods. The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods work. A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of characters into one letter. Many European input methods use composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single letter. The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way. First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character". None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary. Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use; typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if the first guess is wrong. *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters) turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer. If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2. However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can translate automatically to and from either one. *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode. Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not what you want. If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off multibyte characters in that buffer. If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off character conversion as well. *** Displaying international characters on X Windows. A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script. Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports requires using many fonts. Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes. A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as you would use a font. If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot display that character. It will display an empty box instead. The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII characters). *** Defining fontsets. Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource. Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the standard fontset are created automatically. If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn' argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short name is `fontset-startup'. Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2... The resource value should have this form: FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]... FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except: * most fields should be just the wild card "*". * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset" * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset. The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number of times; each time specifies the font for one character set. CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set. Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING. You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name. For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the following resource, Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24 the font for ASCII is generated as below: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1 Here is the substitution rule: Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-. (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.) The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call that function explicitly to create a fontset. With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle fontsets. *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs defaults for a particular choice of language. Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The language environment may also specify a default choice of coding system for new files that you create. It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the whole Emacs session. For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this with (set-language-environment "Latin-1"). *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the coding systems that Emacs supports. *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument) lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file. This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name. After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system is used for *the immediately following command*. So if the immediately following command is a command to read or write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file. If the immediately following command does not use the coding system, then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect. For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1. *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*- construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*- to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end of the file. *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are translated into that character code. This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in various countries to support the languages of those countries. By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all. *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies the coding system for keyboard input. Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example, some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it. By default, keyboard input is not translated at all. Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are designed to work with terminals. *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system) specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess. This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the corresponding buffer. By default, process input and output are not translated at all. *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system to use for encoding file names before operating on them. It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system. *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you want to use. C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method. *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout. *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus related information. *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various scripts. *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays information about the support for a particular language. You specify the language as an argument. *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the first dash. A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters: A alternativnyj (Russian) B big5 (Chinese) C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese) C iso-2022-cn (Chinese) D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages) E euc-japan (Japanese) I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese) K euc-korea (Korean) R koi8 (Russian) Q tibetan S shift_jis (Japanese) T lao T tis620 (Thai) V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese) i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) k iso-2022-kr (Korean) v viqr (Vietnamese) z hz (Chinese) When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system), two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output. *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil. When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing Rmail files themselves. *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil. Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system for sending mail: - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority. - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it. - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used, if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment. - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used. *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English, Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional translations. ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer without any conversion. ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed. You can now specify any number of octal digits. RET terminates the digits and is discarded; any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input. ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for functions, variables and file names used in your programs. Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point. Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point. Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used. ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name in the buffer before point. With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that you are using. With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables, just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag). ** File locking works with NFS now. The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME, in the same directory as FILENAME. This means that collision detection between two different machines now works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory can become a bottleneck. The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is so useful that the change is worth while. When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just tell Emacs to go ahead anyway. ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses, it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call show-paren-mode. ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode. ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode. ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you, it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values. ** Changes in View mode. *** Several new commands are available in View mode. Do H in view mode for a list of commands. *** There are two new commands for entering View mode: view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame. *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their previous state. *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil, scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit. *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer, not just the selected window. *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only turns View mode on or off. *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil, delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it. ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log, now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version. ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version, has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks which version to compare with. ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden blocks if a match is inside the block. The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match is outside the block. By customizing the variable isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search. By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code blocks, all of them or none. ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for confirmation first. ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name, now changes the major mode according to that file name. However, the mode will not be changed if (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode, not suitable for ordinary files, or (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode. This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well. However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then these commands do not change the major mode. ** M-x occur changes. *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters, it performs a case-sensitive search. *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur, if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before. ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in that window unless you select to another window which shows the same buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window. ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information. ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the buffers recently selected in the selected frame. ** Outline mode changes. *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el). *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode. ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer. Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that was already active. The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then get confused by it. If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil. ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs. *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim. The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps. *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search' are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible values. `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace). `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search). ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they can be. The default value is 30. ** Changes in Mail mode. *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly. Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail composition mechanism you have selected with the variable `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old behavior. C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs compose-mail-other-frame. *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the buffer that shows the original message. *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message, with separator lines around the contents. *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail. *** New features in the mail-complete command. **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name, for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all. Its values are like those of mail-from-style. **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in /etc/passwd. **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used: /etc/passwd. ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'. Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise be taken to be magic. ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep. M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that. (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.) ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names suggest they are probably not needed in the long run. In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands. new key dired.el binding old key ------- ---------------- ------- * c dired-change-marks c * m dired-mark m * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted) * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted) * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted) * u dired-unmark u * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL * ? dired-unmark-all-files C-M-? * ! dired-unmark-all-marks * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-} * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{ ** Rmail changes. *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing each time you run it. *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes. *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument means to move in the opposite direction. *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned. *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers. It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used for output. ** Gnus changes. *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion. *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into Gnus. *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection. *** Article washing status can be displayed in the article mode line. *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files. *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID. (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t) *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files are to be considered home score and adapt files. See `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'. *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics. *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable. *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions. See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'. *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like. Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be used to pick articles. *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to another have been added. `M-x gnus-change-server' *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when generating lines in buffers. *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with `C-M-_'. *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'. *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis: (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word)) *** Scores can be decayed. (setq gnus-decay-scores t) *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first. *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from the native server. `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups' *** A new command for reading collections of documents (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `C-M-d'. *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped. *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting. *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added. Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such a group. *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently. See the commands under the `T S' submap. *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently. See the commands under the `G P' submap. *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups. Use the `Y c' command. *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order. *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated. `M-x nnmail-split-history' *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk from incoming mail before saving the mail. See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'. *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files. *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute the following code, for instance, in your .emacs. (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize) Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling this issue.) Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a particular news group. This can be done by: (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM) Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both for reading and posting). CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM) Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages there. Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by default. Here are some of these default settings: (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7) (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312) (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312) (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5) (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr)) When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored; the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual. ** CC mode changes. *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java) code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file. Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is loaded. If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded. *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name of the current buffer. *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use. *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C style that the Python developers like. *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace. This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line, just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line. ** VC Changes [new] *** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked). This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other developers. You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q RET in a buffer visiting that file. *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it. *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for version numbers, based on the current state of the file. ** Calendar changes. *** A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years. *** There is now support for the Baha'i calendar system. Use `pb' in the *Calendar* buffer to display the current Baha'i date. The Baha'i calendar, or "Badi calendar" is a system of 19 months with 19 days each, and 4 intercalary days (5 during a Gregorian leap year). The calendar begins May 23, 1844, with each of the months named after a supposed attribute of God. ** ps-print changes There are some new user variables and subgroups for customizing the page layout. *** Headers & Footers (subgroup) Some printer systems print a header page and force the first page to be printed on the back of the header page when using duplex. If your printer system has this behavior, set variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' to t. If variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' is non-nil, it prints a blank page as the very first printed page. So, it behaves as if the very first character of buffer (or region) were a form feed ^L (\014). The variable `ps-spool-config' specifies who is responsible for setting duplex mode and page size. Valid values are: lpr-switches duplex and page size are configured by `ps-lpr-switches'. Don't forget to set `ps-lpr-switches' to select duplex printing for your printer. setpagedevice duplex and page size are configured by ps-print using the setpagedevice PostScript operator. nil duplex and page size are configured by ps-print *not* using the setpagedevice PostScript operator. The variable `ps-spool-tumble' specifies how the page images on opposite sides of a sheet are oriented with respect to each other. If `ps-spool-tumble' is nil, ps-print produces output suitable for bindings on the left or right. If `ps-spool-tumble' is non-nil, ps-print produces output suitable for bindings at the top or bottom. This variable takes effect only if `ps-spool-duplex' is non-nil. The default value is nil. The variable `ps-header-frame-alist' specifies a header frame properties alist. Valid frame properties are: fore-color Specify the foreground frame color. Value should be a float number between 0.0 (black color) and 1.0 (white color), or a string which is a color name, or a list of 3 float numbers which correspond to the Red Green Blue color scale, each float number between 0.0 (dark color) and 1.0 (bright color). The default is 0 ("black"). back-color Specify the background frame color (similar to fore-color). The default is 0.9 ("gray90"). shadow-color Specify the shadow color (similar to fore-color). The default is 0 ("black"). border-color Specify the border color (similar to fore-color). The default is 0 ("black"). border-width Specify the border width. The default is 0.4. Any other property is ignored. Don't change this alist directly; instead use Custom, or the `ps-value', `ps-get', `ps-put' and `ps-del' functions (see there for documentation). Ps-print can also print footers. The footer variables are: `ps-print-footer', `ps-footer-offset', `ps-print-footer-frame', `ps-footer-font-family', `ps-footer-font-size', `ps-footer-line-pad', `ps-footer-lines', `ps-left-footer', `ps-right-footer' and `ps-footer-frame-alist'. These variables are similar to those controlling headers. *** Color management (subgroup) If `ps-print-color-p' is non-nil, the buffer's text will be printed in color. *** Face Management (subgroup) If you need to print without worrying about face background colors, set the variable `ps-use-face-background' which specifies if face background should be used. Valid values are: t always use face background color. nil never use face background color. (face...) list of faces whose background color will be used. *** N-up printing (subgroup) The variable `ps-n-up-printing' specifies the number of pages per sheet of paper. The variable `ps-n-up-margin' specifies the margin in points (pt) between the sheet border and the n-up printing. If variable `ps-n-up-border-p' is non-nil, a border is drawn around each page. The variable `ps-n-up-filling' specifies how the page matrix is filled on each sheet of paper. Following are the valid values for `ps-n-up-filling' with a filling example using a 3x4 page matrix: `left-top' 1 2 3 4 `left-bottom' 9 10 11 12 5 6 7 8 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 `right-top' 4 3 2 1 `right-bottom' 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 8 7 6 5 12 11 10 9 4 3 2 1 `top-left' 1 4 7 10 `bottom-left' 3 6 9 12 2 5 8 11 2 5 8 11 3 6 9 12 1 4 7 10 `top-right' 10 7 4 1 `bottom-right' 12 9 6 3 11 8 5 2 11 8 5 2 12 9 6 3 10 7 4 1 Any other value is treated as `left-top'. *** Zebra stripes (subgroup) The variable `ps-zebra-color' controls the zebra stripes grayscale or RGB color. The variable `ps-zebra-stripe-follow' specifies how zebra stripes continue on next page. Visually, valid values are (the character `+' to the right of each column indicates that a line is printed): `nil' `follow' `full' `full-follow' Current Page -------- ----------- --------- ---------------- 1 XXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXX + 1 XXXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 7 XXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXX + 7 XXXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 10 + 10 + 11 + 11 + -------- ----------- --------- ---------------- Next Page -------- ----------- --------- ---------------- 12 XXXXX + 12 + 10 XXXXXX + 10 + 13 XXXXX + 13 XXXXXXXX + 11 XXXXXX + 11 + 14 XXXXX + 14 XXXXXXXX + 12 XXXXXX + 12 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXX + 13 + 13 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 16 + 16 + 14 + 14 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 17 + 17 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXX + 18 + 16 XXXXXX + 16 + 19 XXXXX + 19 XXXXXXXX + 17 XXXXXX + 17 + 20 XXXXX + 20 XXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXXX + 18 + 21 + 21 XXXXXXXX + 22 + 22 + -------- ----------- --------- ---------------- Any other value is treated as `nil'. *** Printer management (subgroup) The variable `ps-printer-name-option' determines the option used by some utilities to indicate the printer name; it's used only when `ps-printer-name' is a non-empty string. If you're using the lpr utility to print, for example, `ps-printer-name-option' should be set to "-P". The variable `ps-manual-feed' indicates if the printer requires manual paper feeding. If it's nil, automatic feeding takes place. If it's non-nil, manual feeding takes place. The variable `ps-end-with-control-d' specifies whether C-d (\x04) should be inserted at end of the generated PostScript. Non-nil means do so. *** Page settings (subgroup) If variable `ps-warn-paper-type' is nil, it's *not* treated as an error if the PostScript printer doesn't have a paper with the size indicated by `ps-paper-type'; the default paper size will be used instead. If `ps-warn-paper-type' is non-nil, an error is signaled if the PostScript printer doesn't support a paper with the size indicated by `ps-paper-type'. This is used when `ps-spool-config' is set to `setpagedevice'. The variable `ps-print-upside-down' determines the orientation for printing pages: nil means `normal' printing, non-nil means `upside-down' printing (that is, the page is rotated by 180 degrees). The variable `ps-selected-pages' specifies which pages to print. If it's nil, all pages are printed. If it's a list, list elements may be integers specifying a single page to print, or cons cells (FROM . TO) specifying to print from page FROM to TO. Invalid list elements, that is integers smaller than one, or elements whose FROM is greater than its TO, are ignored. The variable `ps-even-or-odd-pages' specifies how to print even/odd pages. Valid values are: nil print all pages. `even-page' print only even pages. `odd-page' print only odd pages. `even-sheet' print only even sheets. That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like `even-page', but for values greater than 1, it'll print only the even sheet of paper. `odd-sheet' print only odd sheets. That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like `odd-page'; but for values greater than 1, it'll print only the odd sheet of paper. Any other value is treated as nil. If you set `ps-selected-pages' (see there for documentation), pages are filtered by `ps-selected-pages', and then by `ps-even-or-odd-pages'. For example, if we have: (setq ps-selected-pages '(1 4 (6 . 10) (12 . 16) 20)) and we combine this with `ps-even-or-odd-pages' and `ps-n-up-printing', we get: `ps-n-up-printing' = 1: `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED nil 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20 even-page 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20 odd-page 1, 7, 9, 13, 15 even-sheet 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20 odd-sheet 1, 7, 9, 13, 15 `ps-n-up-printing' = 2: `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED nil 1/4, 6/7, 8/9, 10/12, 13/14, 15/16, 20 even-page 4/6, 8/10, 12/14, 16/20 odd-page 1/7, 9/13, 15 even-sheet 6/7, 10/12, 15/16 odd-sheet 1/4, 8/9, 13/14, 20 *** Miscellany (subgroup) The variable `ps-error-handler-message' specifies where error handler messages should be sent. It is also possible to add a user-defined PostScript prologue code in front of all generated prologue code by setting the variable `ps-user-defined-prologue'. The variable `ps-line-number-font' specifies the font for line numbers. The variable `ps-line-number-font-size' specifies the font size in points for line numbers. The variable `ps-line-number-color' specifies the color for line numbers. See `ps-zebra-color' for documentation. The variable `ps-line-number-step' specifies the interval in which line numbers are printed. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set to 2, the printing will look like: 1 one line one line 3 one line one line 5 one line one line ... Valid values are: integer an integer specifying the interval in which line numbers are printed. If it's smaller than or equal to zero, 1 is used. `zebra' specifies that only the line number of the first line in a zebra stripe is to be printed. Any other value is treated as `zebra'. The variable `ps-line-number-start' specifies the starting point in the interval given by `ps-line-number-step'. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set to 3, and `ps-line-number-start' is set to 3, the output will look like: one line one line 3 one line one line one line 6 one line one line one line 9 one line one line ... The variable `ps-postscript-code-directory' specifies the directory where the PostScript prologue file used by ps-print is found. The variable `ps-line-spacing' determines the line spacing in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to `ps-font-size'). The variable `ps-paragraph-spacing' determines the paragraph spacing, in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to `ps-font-size'). The variable `ps-paragraph-regexp' specifies the paragraph delimiter. The variable `ps-begin-cut-regexp' and `ps-end-cut-regexp' specify the start and end of a region to cut out when printing. ** hideshow changes. *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for C++, ; for lisp). *** Support for java-mode added. *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set. *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'. *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more robust and a lot faster. *** A block beginning can span multiple lines. *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the documentation for more details. ** Changes in Enriched mode. *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled the next time unless the fill-column is different. *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text. ** Font Lock mode *** Custom support The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize. You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances. *** Maximum decoration Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil to get the old behavior. *** New support Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes. Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode. *** Configurable support Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types, c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it, java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification. Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types. *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs, for any mode. For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put: (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\ tex --> reftex.el ** Changes in BibTeX mode. *** Info documentation is now available. *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode. *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to bibtex-user-optional-fields. *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead). *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by appropriate functions. *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of entries. They are bound by default to C-M-l and C-M-h. *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has been cleaned. *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter. *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries shall be delimited. *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and bibtex-include-OPTkey for details. *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are prefixed with `ALT'. *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable documentation). *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too. *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if comma should be inserted at end of last field. *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation). *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries. *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer. *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database from alien sources. *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string) to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in crossref entries. *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or region. *** Added support for imenu. *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g. `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors. *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files from `bibtex-string-files' are searched. ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative. ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow. ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem. Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory as an argument. When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed). ** browse-url changes *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm), Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated customization variables. *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'. *** URLs marked up with (RFC1738) work if broken across lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'. ** Changes in Ediff *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel pops up the Info file for this command. *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different directories). *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of files in the same directory. *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively. The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug related to the GNU format has now been fixed.) ** Changes in Viper *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper- instead of vip-. *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states. *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before. *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states. *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state. *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor color when Viper is in insert state. *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window, Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior. ** Etags changes. *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average. Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on. *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags. *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements" constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java. *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax). In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash. *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories, methods and protocols. *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a paragraph name. *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression at least M times and as many as N times. ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert in files has changed slightly. With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string, time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it. This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility with old time-stamp-format values. In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character. This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility reasons. In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d". Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway. The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being recommended now will continue to work then. See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for details. ** There are some additional major modes: dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files. m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input. meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files. ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell into Emacs. ** New Lisp packages include: *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops. *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might be used for adding some indecent words to your email. *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor. *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes in shell buffers. *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code. See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer' and `elint-defun'. *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within strings or comments. These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev, you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text at these points. *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you can visit them by short forms of their names. *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded Emacs Lisp function at point. *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture. *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way. *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning. *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program. *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input. *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed. *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature. You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its original place after inserting the copy. *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2 on the buffer. You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed. Enable mouse-drag with: (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw) -or- (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag) *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail. *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave. It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess. *** ogonek The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for instance) and vice versa. To use this package load it using M-x load-library [enter] ogonek Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish M-x ogonek-how -- in English The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the ways of customization in `.emacs'. *** Interface to ph. Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi) The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to these servers. *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email. *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature. You can move the virtual cursor with special commands while the real cursor does not move. *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up for visiting your favorite web sites. *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations, so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used. ** movemail change Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server. This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before. * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows. ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files. Emacs handles three different conventions for representing end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention. To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos. * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20. ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed to start with w32- instead of win32-. In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it "win". ** Basic Lisp changes *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant. *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program or by the user. The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed. *** There are new macros `when' and `unless' (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...)) (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...) *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of its argument. *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties. *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function. *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors. *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the `format' function. *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc. *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on adding one of these suffixes. *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE which specifies the base to use when converting an integer. If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used. We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers, because that would be much more work and does not seem useful. *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings. *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally. You must load the `cl' library to define it. *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this: (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...) BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use. BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer. *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer' works using `save-current-buffer'. *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value of the last form. *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer, which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string) as the last form. *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the matches. For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose"). *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string. Then it returns that string. For example, if the current buffer name is `foo', (with-output-to-string (princ "The buffer is ") (princ (buffer-name))) returns "The buffer is foo". ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil. These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte characters that occupy several buffer positions each. *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four). Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements; character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes. Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))). ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always. Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte characters". The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is. *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a character, which may be more than one buffer position. This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is always one buffer position, need to be changed. However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position. *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters, because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However, the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters, guaranteed. *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a character). When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS: 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range, 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form, 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form, 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form, 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character. *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses. *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be more than the number of characters. You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape, \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape. *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters and returns a string containing those characters. *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string. (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a character, sref signals an error. *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes). *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes). *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string to a vector of the characters in it. *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents of a string. You call it as follows: (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ) This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string. This function really does alter the contents of STRING. Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string, it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length. *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR, if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window. *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING, if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window. *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary, to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string which contains all or just part of the existing string.) (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING) This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN. The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column. If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string are not included in the resulting value. The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING. If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one character extends across that column), then the padding character PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at column START-COLUMN. *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called, the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the changed text, before the change. *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is one character set for each script, not for each language. **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name. **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names. **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.) **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values which identify the character within that character set. **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the opposite of split-char. **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets of all the characters between BEG and END. **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets of all the characters in a string. *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems and specifying coding systems. **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants. (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well as what to do about code conversion.) **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system name. It returns t if so, nil if not. **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist, except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name. Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp to match against a file name. VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr specifies the coding system for encoding. If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above. **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies the coding system to use for network sockets. Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be either a port number or a regular expression matching some network service names. VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr specifies the coding system for encoding. If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above. **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist, except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to start the subprocess. **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output, when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it. **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous subprocess. It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection, but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or connection permanently or until overridden. The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil. It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding system for one operation at a time. **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from files, subprocesses or network connections. **** The function process-coding-system tells you what coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using. The value is a cons cell, (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM) where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding input to the subprocess. **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess. ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility, you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom. You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of information (usually): the "type" which says what values are legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for customization. Thus, instead of writing (defvar foo-blurgoze nil "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.") you would now write this: (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely." :type 'boolean :group foo) The type `boolean' means that this variable has only two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom for a description of them. The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option should belong to. You define a new group like this: (defgroup ispell nil "Spell checking using Ispell." :group 'processes) The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself, but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages. Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple package should have just one group; a more complex package should have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword" first-level subgroups. ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers. This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a separate manual that accompanies Emacs. ** easy-mmode The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles, predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also `easy-mmode-define-keymap'. ** Text property changes *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a text property. *** The new functions next-char-property-change and previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan. If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the position of the beginning or end of the buffer. *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This is an alternative to using the keymap itself. ** Changes in invisibility features *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should make the overlay visible. During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and t when it should hide it. *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol) and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol. Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'. Here is an example of how to do this: ;; If we want to display an ellipsis: (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t)) ;; If you don't want ellipsis: (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol) ... (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol) ... ;; When done with the overlays: (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t)) ;; Or respectively: (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol) ** Changes in syntax parsing. *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil. If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always used to determine the syntax of the character at the position. When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a character in the buffer is calculated thus: a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type; Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e., a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR). b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property is a syntax table, this syntax table is used (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to determine the syntax type of the character. c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table of the current buffer. *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions. *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table' text property. *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string. *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp' (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth element: the character address of the start of last comment or string; nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code. *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'. ** Changes in face features *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces. *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one). *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold. set-face-bold-p sets that flag. *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic. set-face-italic-p sets that flag. *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME) and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in the `face' property (either the character's text property or an overlay property). This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use arbitrary colors in a Lisp package. ** Changes in file-handling functions *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words, they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion is now done only in substitute-in-file-name. This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name begins with ~. *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file, it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error. *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers. *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file, as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil. *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses character code conversion as well as other things. Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names (formerly it did not). *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR environment variable to decide which directory to put them in. *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps instead of constant strings. *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through. substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially, in the same way as before. *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now. The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion. *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing else, and returns nil. *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified directory cannot be listed. ** Changes in minibuffer input *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an additional argument which specifies the default value. If this argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two ways: It is returned if the user enters empty input. It is available through the history command M-n. *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer, read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer. In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an argument in this way. *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil. ** Echo area features *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active after the echo area is cleared. *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed in the echo area, or nil if there is none. ** Keyboard input features *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started. *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated by keyboard macros. ** Frame-related changes *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg. *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run. *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed in the selected frame. *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies which side of the window to put the scroll bars on. ** X Windows features *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs. *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work. The menu displays the current status of the box or button. *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return. A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster. If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern, it is good to supply 1 for this argument. ** Subprocess features *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this automatically. *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command and returns the output from the command as a string. *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process, and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection. ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before. ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it goes after the other menu items. ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks are in use. The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a series of several changes--if that seems safe. Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls form. ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense, but its hook is still run. ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it) for errors that are handled by condition-case. If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case. This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't warned. ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own way for Emacs to "ring the bell". ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for functions like display-time. ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before. ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit. ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code if there is an error in compilation. ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil, they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list. ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty, Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing the *scratch* buffer. ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string. The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important, e.g., in Font Lock mode. ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer, and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window. It starts at 0 when the buffer is created. ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window and compose-mail-other-frame. ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The full name of the specified user will be returned. ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization files at all. ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros. For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that is how %S normally pads to two positions. ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url. ** imenu.el changes. You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an item from menu created by imenu. An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we select one of those items. * For older news, see the file ONEWS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright information: Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn. Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions, provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last changed them. Local variables: mode: outline paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" end: arch-tag: 1aca9dfa-2ac4-4d14-bebf-0007cee12793