1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
14 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
16 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
17 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
20 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
21 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
23 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
24 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
25 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
27 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
28 is running in batch mode. For example,
30 (message "%s" (read t))
32 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
35 ** Faces and frame parameters.
37 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
38 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
39 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
40 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
41 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
42 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
43 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
45 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
46 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
47 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
48 `default' face and vice versa.
52 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
53 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
54 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
56 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
58 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
59 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
60 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
61 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
63 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
64 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
65 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
67 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
70 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
72 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
73 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
74 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
75 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
78 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
80 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
81 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
82 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
83 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
86 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
87 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
88 under Lisp changes, below.
90 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
92 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
93 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
96 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
97 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
98 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
99 customizing face `fringe'.
101 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
102 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
106 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
107 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
109 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
111 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
112 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
113 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
114 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
115 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
118 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
119 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
120 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
121 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
122 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
123 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
125 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
126 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
127 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
128 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
129 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
130 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
132 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
133 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
134 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
135 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
136 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
138 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
140 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
141 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
142 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
144 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
146 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
147 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
148 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
149 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
150 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
155 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
156 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
160 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
161 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
162 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
165 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
167 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
168 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
169 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
172 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
173 have to do anything to activate it.
175 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
177 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
178 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
179 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
180 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
182 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
184 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
186 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
188 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
191 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
194 ** Hscrolling in C code.
196 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
200 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
201 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
203 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
205 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
206 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
207 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
208 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
209 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
211 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
213 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
216 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
217 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
219 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
221 - Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
222 toggles the read-only status.
224 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
226 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
228 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
229 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
232 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
234 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
235 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
236 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
237 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
238 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
239 attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
243 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
244 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
245 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
246 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
247 to enable sound support.
249 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
250 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
251 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
252 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
253 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
254 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
256 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
258 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
260 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
261 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
262 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
264 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
265 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
267 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
268 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
269 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
271 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
273 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
274 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
275 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
276 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
278 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
279 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
280 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
281 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
283 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
284 notably at the end of lines.
286 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
287 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
289 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
290 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
291 after each match to get the replacement text.
293 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
295 If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
296 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
297 on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
298 by setting the following variable:
300 - User option: max-mini-window-height
302 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
303 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
304 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
308 ** Comint (subshell) changes
310 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
311 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
313 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
314 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
315 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
317 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
318 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
319 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
321 ** Changes to TeX mode
323 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
326 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
328 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
329 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
330 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
331 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
332 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
333 can be edited from that buffer.
335 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
336 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
337 `A' to use all marked entries).
339 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
340 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
342 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
343 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
344 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
347 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
348 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
349 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
350 in column 1 are always made leaves.
352 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
353 has the following new features:
355 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
356 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
357 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
358 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
360 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
361 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
362 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
363 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
364 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
369 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
370 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
371 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
373 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
374 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
375 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
376 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
380 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
381 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
382 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
384 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
385 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
388 ** New features in evaluation commands
390 The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
391 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
392 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
393 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
394 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
398 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
399 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
400 is, delete only empty directories.
402 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
403 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
404 copy directories recursively.
406 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
407 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
408 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
410 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
411 use the -f option when sending mail.
415 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
416 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
418 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
420 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
421 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
422 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
423 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
424 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
425 `secondary-selection'.
427 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
428 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
429 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
430 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
431 usual snappy response.
433 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
434 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
435 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
436 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
439 ** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
440 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
441 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
443 ** Shell script mode changes.
445 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
446 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
447 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
451 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
453 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
454 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
455 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
456 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
457 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
459 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
460 declarations when given the --declarations option.
462 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
463 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
465 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
468 *** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
470 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
472 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
475 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
476 variables are tagged.
478 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
480 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
483 ** Changes in etags.el
485 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
486 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
488 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
489 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
490 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
491 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
493 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
495 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
496 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
498 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
500 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
501 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
502 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
504 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
505 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
507 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
508 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
510 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
511 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
512 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
514 ** New language environments `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
515 These correspond respectively to the ISO character sets 8859-14
516 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign). There is
517 currently no specific input method support for them.
519 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sqeuence-nos' to
520 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
521 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
523 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
525 ** New modes and packages
527 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
529 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
531 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
533 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
536 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
539 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
541 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
543 *** whitespace.el ???
545 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
546 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
547 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
548 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
549 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
550 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
551 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
553 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
555 Here is an example of columns:
558 dog pineapple car EXTRA
559 porcupine strawberry airplane
561 Doing the following settings:
563 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
564 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
565 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
566 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
569 Selecting the lines above and typing:
571 M-x delimit-columns-region
575 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
576 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
577 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
579 delim-col has the following options:
581 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
584 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
587 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
590 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
593 delim-col has the following commands:
595 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
596 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
598 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
599 were operated on recently. When enabled, a new "Open Recent" submenu
600 is displayed in the "Files" menu.
602 The recent files list is automatically saved across Emacs sessions.
604 To enable/disable recentf use M-x recentf-mode.
606 To enable recentf at Emacs startup use
607 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET.
609 To change the number of recent files displayed and others options use
610 M-x customize-group RET recentf RET.
612 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
615 ** Withdrawn packages
617 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
618 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
620 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el.
622 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
624 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
625 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
626 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
627 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
629 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
630 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
631 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
633 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
634 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
637 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
639 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
640 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
641 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
644 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
645 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
647 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
648 instead of being optional.
650 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
651 modify read-only text.
653 ** New functions and variables for locales.
655 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
656 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
657 time functions like strftime. The new variables
658 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
659 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
661 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
662 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
663 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
664 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
665 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
666 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
667 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
669 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
670 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
671 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
674 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
675 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
677 ** New function `propertize'
679 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
680 strings with text properties.
682 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
684 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
685 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
686 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
687 specified value of that property. Example:
689 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
692 ** push and pop macros.
694 A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
695 is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
696 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
698 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
699 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
700 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
703 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
704 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
706 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
707 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
708 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
709 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
710 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
712 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
714 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
715 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
716 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
717 [:alpha:] matches letters.
718 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
719 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
720 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
721 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
722 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
723 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
724 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
725 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
726 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
727 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
728 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
731 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
733 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
735 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
737 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
738 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
742 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
743 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
744 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
748 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
749 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
751 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
753 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
754 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
755 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
756 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
757 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
759 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
761 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
762 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
763 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
767 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
768 Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
769 their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
770 hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
772 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
774 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
776 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
778 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
780 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
782 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
785 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
787 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
789 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
791 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
793 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
795 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
797 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
799 Returns the size of TABLE.
801 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
803 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
805 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
807 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
809 - Function: clrhash TABLE
813 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
815 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
818 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
820 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
821 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
823 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
825 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
827 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
829 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
830 arguments KEY and VALUE.
832 - Function: sxhash OBJ
834 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
836 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
838 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
839 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
840 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
841 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
842 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
844 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
846 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
847 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
848 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
850 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
851 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
853 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
854 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
856 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
859 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
860 'case-fold-string-hash))
862 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
865 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
867 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
868 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
869 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
872 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
874 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
875 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
878 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
879 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
880 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
881 is too short to reach that column.
884 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
885 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
886 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
887 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
889 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
890 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
891 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
894 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
895 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
898 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
899 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
902 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
903 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
904 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
905 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
906 temporary-file-directory instead.
909 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
910 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
911 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
912 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
915 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
916 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
919 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
921 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
922 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
923 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
926 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
928 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
929 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
930 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
931 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
932 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
933 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
935 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
936 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
937 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
938 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
941 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
943 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
944 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
945 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
948 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
949 string where arguments appear in the result string.
953 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
955 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
956 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
959 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
962 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
964 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
965 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
968 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
970 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
971 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
977 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
978 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
980 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
981 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
982 to enable sound support.
984 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
985 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
986 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
987 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
988 sound to play, before playing the sound.
990 The following sound properties are supported:
994 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
995 searched relative to `data-directory'.
999 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
1000 0..1. This property is optional.
1002 Other properties are ignored.
1004 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
1006 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
1008 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1009 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1010 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1011 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1013 ** New face implementation.
1015 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
1016 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
1021 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
1023 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
1025 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
1026 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
1028 3. Font height in 1/10pt
1030 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
1032 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
1034 6. Foreground color.
1036 7. Background color.
1038 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
1040 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
1042 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
1044 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
1046 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
1049 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
1050 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
1052 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
1053 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
1054 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
1055 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
1056 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
1057 attributes mentioned above.
1059 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
1060 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
1063 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
1064 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
1070 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
1071 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
1072 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
1073 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
1074 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
1075 results in a fully-specified face.
1078 *** Face realization.
1080 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
1081 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
1082 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
1083 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
1084 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
1085 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
1087 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
1088 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
1089 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
1090 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
1092 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
1093 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
1094 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
1095 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
1096 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
1098 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
1099 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
1100 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
1101 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
1102 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
1105 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
1106 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
1107 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
1108 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
1111 **** Clearing face caches.
1113 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
1114 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
1120 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
1121 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
1122 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
1124 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
1125 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
1126 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
1127 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
1128 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
1130 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
1131 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
1132 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
1134 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
1136 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
1137 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
1138 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
1139 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
1140 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
1141 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
1142 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
1144 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
1145 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
1151 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
1152 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
1155 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
1156 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
1157 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
1158 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
1159 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
1162 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
1164 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
1167 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
1169 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
1171 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
1172 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
1173 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
1175 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
1176 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
1177 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
1178 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
1179 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
1180 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
1181 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
1182 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
1183 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
1184 of the face font sort order.
1186 - Function: x-font-family-list
1188 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
1189 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
1190 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
1191 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
1193 - Variable: font-list-limit
1195 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1196 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1197 matching font. The default is currently 100.
1200 *** Setting face attributes.
1202 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1203 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1204 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1207 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1208 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1210 The following attributes are recognized:
1214 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1215 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1216 and `?' are allowed.
1220 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1221 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1222 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1223 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1227 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
1232 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1233 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1234 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1238 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1239 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1242 `:foreground', `:background'
1244 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1248 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1249 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1250 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1255 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1256 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1257 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1262 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1263 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1264 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1265 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1269 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1270 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1271 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1272 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1273 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1274 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1275 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1276 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1277 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1278 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1279 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1280 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1281 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1282 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1283 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1284 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1289 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1290 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1294 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1295 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1296 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1297 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1298 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1299 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1301 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1302 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1306 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1307 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1308 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1311 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1312 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1313 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1315 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1318 *** Face attributes and X resources
1320 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1323 Face attribute X resource class
1324 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
1325 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1326 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1327 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1328 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1329 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1330 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1331 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1332 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1333 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1334 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1335 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1336 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1337 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
1338 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
1339 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1340 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1341 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1342 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1343 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1346 *** Text property `face'.
1348 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1349 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1350 specification can be
1352 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1354 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1355 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1356 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1357 for face attribute names.
1359 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1360 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1361 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1364 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1366 The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1367 for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1368 terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1369 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1370 `tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1371 used to clear the mapping table.
1374 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
1376 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
1378 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1379 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1380 Otherwise, it returns zero.
1382 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
1384 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
1385 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
1388 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
1389 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
1390 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
1391 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
1392 commands continue into the next field if repeated.
1394 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
1395 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
1396 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
1398 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
1400 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
1402 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
1403 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1404 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
1405 constrained position if that is is different.
1407 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
1408 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
1409 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
1410 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
1411 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1412 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
1415 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
1416 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
1417 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
1418 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
1419 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
1421 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
1423 Erases the field surrounding POS.
1424 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1425 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1427 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1429 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
1430 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1431 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1432 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
1433 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
1435 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
1437 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
1438 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1439 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1440 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
1441 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
1443 - Function: field-string &optional POS
1445 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
1446 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1447 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1449 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
1451 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
1452 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
1453 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
1458 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1459 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1460 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1461 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1463 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1464 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1465 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1466 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1469 IMAGE is an image specification.
1471 *** Image specifications
1473 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1474 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1475 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
1476 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
1477 described below are ignored.
1479 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1483 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1484 of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1488 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
1489 margin around the image. Default is 0.
1493 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1498 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1499 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1500 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1501 which is intended to display images "disabled."
1503 `:heuristic-mask BG'
1505 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1506 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1507 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1508 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1509 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1510 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1511 background of the image.
1515 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1516 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1517 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1518 may be present in the image specification.
1520 *** Supported image types
1522 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
1524 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1525 properties supported are
1529 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1530 is the frame's foreground.
1534 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1535 the frame's background color.
1537 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1538 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1539 instead of a `:file' property.
1543 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1547 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1553 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1554 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1556 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1558 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1561 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
1563 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1564 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1565 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1566 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1568 Additional image properties supported are:
1570 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1572 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1573 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1576 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1577 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1581 DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
1582 string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1584 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1585 to display compressed images.
1587 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
1589 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1590 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1593 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1595 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1596 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1599 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1601 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1602 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1605 **** GIF, image type `gif'
1607 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1608 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1610 Additional image properties supported are:
1614 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1615 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1617 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1618 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1619 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1622 (defun show-anim (file max)
1623 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1624 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1626 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1629 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1632 (goto-char (point-min))
1633 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1634 (insert-image img "x"))
1635 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1637 **** PNG, image type `png'
1639 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1640 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1643 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1645 Additional image properties supported are:
1649 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
1650 integer. This is a required property.
1654 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
1655 must be a integer. This is an required property.
1659 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1660 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1661 files. This is an required property.
1663 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1668 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1669 which are supported in the current configuration.
1671 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1672 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1673 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1676 *** Simplified image API, image.el
1678 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1679 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1680 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1681 define an image based on available image types. The functions
1682 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1688 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1691 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1692 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1693 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1694 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1695 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1696 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1697 of the display margins.
1699 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1700 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1701 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1702 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1708 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1709 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1710 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1711 that have a `help-echo' property.
1713 The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1714 items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1715 If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1716 evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1717 tool-bar item is used.
1719 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1720 help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1721 help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1724 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1726 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1727 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1729 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1730 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1731 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1732 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1735 (global-set-key [A-down]
1738 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1739 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
1740 (global-set-key [A-up]
1743 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1744 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1747 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1749 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1750 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1751 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1752 is called with one argument, POS.
1754 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1755 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1756 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1757 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1758 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1761 ** Tool bar support.
1763 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1764 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1765 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1766 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1767 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1768 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1770 *** Tool bar item definitions
1772 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1773 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1774 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
1776 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1777 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1778 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1779 property (see below).
1781 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1782 binding are currently ignored.
1784 The following properties are recognized:
1788 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1793 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
1797 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1798 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1799 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
1801 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1803 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1804 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
1808 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1809 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1810 meaning of each of the four elements:
1812 Index Use when item is
1813 ----------------------------------------
1814 0 enabled and selected
1815 1 enabled and deselected
1816 2 disabled and selected
1817 3 disabled and deselected
1819 `:help HELP-STRING'.
1821 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1822 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1824 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
1826 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
1827 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
1828 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
1830 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
1831 raised when the mouse moves over them.
1833 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
1834 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
1835 pixels. Default is 1.
1837 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
1838 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
1840 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
1842 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
1845 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
1846 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
1847 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
1849 is the original tool bar item definition, then
1851 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
1853 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
1856 ** Mode line changes.
1859 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
1861 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
1862 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
1863 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
1865 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
1866 a `local-map' text property.
1868 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
1869 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
1871 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
1872 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
1873 `local-map' property.
1875 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
1876 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
1879 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
1880 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
1883 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
1884 variable mode-line-format to nil.
1887 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
1889 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
1890 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
1891 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
1892 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
1895 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
1898 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
1899 position in the header-line.
1902 ** Text property `display'
1904 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
1905 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
1906 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
1907 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
1909 *** Variable width and height spaces
1911 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
1912 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
1913 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
1914 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
1915 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
1916 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
1917 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
1919 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
1920 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
1921 properties described below.
1923 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
1924 characters having the `display' property.
1928 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
1929 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
1931 - :relative-width FACTOR
1933 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
1934 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
1935 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
1936 width of that character by FACTOR.
1940 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
1941 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
1943 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
1947 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
1950 - :relative-height FACTOR
1952 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
1953 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
1957 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
1958 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
1959 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
1962 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
1966 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
1967 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
1968 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
1969 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
1970 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
1971 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
1972 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
1973 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
1974 as display specification.
1976 *** Other display properties
1978 - :space-width FACTOR
1980 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
1981 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
1986 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
1988 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
1989 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
1990 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
1991 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
1992 a font is available counts as a step.
1994 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
1995 as tall as the frame's default font.
1997 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
1998 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
2000 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
2001 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
2005 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
2006 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
2007 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
2008 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
2009 `:height' subproperty.
2011 *** Conditional display properties
2013 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
2014 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
2015 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
2016 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
2017 the text having the `display' property.
2019 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
2023 ** New menu separator types.
2025 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
2026 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
2027 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
2028 to specify other menu separator types.
2030 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
2032 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
2035 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
2037 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
2039 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
2041 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
2043 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
2045 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2047 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
2049 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
2051 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
2053 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
2054 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
2056 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
2058 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
2060 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
2062 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
2064 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
2066 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
2068 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
2070 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2072 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
2074 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
2076 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
2078 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
2080 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
2082 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
2084 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
2085 the corresponding single-line separators.
2088 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
2090 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
2091 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
2092 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
2093 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
2094 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
2095 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
2096 default foreground is black.
2098 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
2099 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
2100 `ScrollBarBackground').
2102 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
2103 settings for scroll bar colors.
2106 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
2107 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
2110 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
2111 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
2112 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
2113 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
2114 the original window start.
2117 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
2118 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
2119 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
2122 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
2124 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
2125 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
2126 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
2127 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
2129 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
2130 fixed-width and fixed-height.
2132 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
2134 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
2135 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
2136 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
2137 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
2138 temporarily to nil, for example
2140 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
2141 (enlarge-window 10))
2143 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
2144 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
2146 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
2148 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
2149 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
2151 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
2153 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
2155 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
2156 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
2157 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
2159 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
2160 is the one that is used.
2162 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
2163 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
2164 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
2165 separate from the command's regular output.
2166 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
2167 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
2168 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
2171 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
2172 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
2173 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
2174 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
2176 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
2177 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
2178 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
2179 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
2181 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
2182 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
2183 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
2184 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
2186 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
2187 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
2188 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
2189 they never ignore case.
2191 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
2192 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
2193 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
2194 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
2195 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
2196 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
2197 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
2199 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
2200 the same format that was used in the file before.
2202 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
2203 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
2205 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
2206 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
2207 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
2209 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
2210 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
2211 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
2212 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
2213 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
2214 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
2215 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
2217 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
2218 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
2219 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
2220 format. You can now customize these variables.
2222 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
2223 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
2224 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
2225 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
2227 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
2228 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
2229 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
2231 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
2232 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
2233 doesn't have any effect.
2235 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
2238 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
2239 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
2240 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
2242 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
2243 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
2244 `auto-show-mode' command.
2246 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
2247 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
2248 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
2249 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
2250 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
2252 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
2253 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
2255 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
2256 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
2257 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
2259 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
2260 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
2261 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
2262 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
2264 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
2266 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
2267 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
2268 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2269 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2270 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2272 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2273 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2275 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2276 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2277 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2278 `?' on other systems.
2280 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2281 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2284 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2285 current codepage when it starts.
2289 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2290 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2291 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2292 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2293 buffer-file-coding-system.
2295 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2296 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2299 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2300 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2301 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2302 list of possible coding systems.
2306 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2307 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2308 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2309 docstring for details.
2311 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2312 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2313 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2314 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2315 lineup functions use this feature currently.
2317 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2318 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2320 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2321 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2323 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2324 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2325 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2326 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2329 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2330 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2332 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2333 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2334 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2335 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2337 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2338 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2339 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2340 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2341 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2343 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2345 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2347 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2348 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2350 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2352 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2353 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2354 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2355 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2356 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2360 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2361 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2362 Gnus manual for the full story.
2364 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2365 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2366 group, which is created automatically.
2368 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2371 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2373 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2374 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2376 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2379 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2381 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2382 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2384 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2386 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2387 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2389 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2390 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2392 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2393 control over simplification.
2395 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2397 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2400 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2402 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2404 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
2405 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2406 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2408 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2409 `a' forces normal posting method.
2411 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2414 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2417 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2418 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2420 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2423 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2425 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2427 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2428 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2430 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2431 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2433 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2435 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2438 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2439 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2441 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2442 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2444 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2446 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2448 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2450 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2452 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2453 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2454 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2456 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2457 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2458 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2459 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2460 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2462 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2463 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2464 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2465 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2467 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2468 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2469 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2472 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
2474 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2475 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2477 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2478 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2479 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2480 removed from the label.
2482 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2483 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2485 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2486 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2488 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2489 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
2492 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2494 ** New/deleted modes and packages
2496 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2497 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2499 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2500 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2501 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2503 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2504 changes with a special face.
2506 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2507 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2508 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2510 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2512 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2513 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2514 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2515 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2516 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2518 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2519 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2520 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2522 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2523 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2524 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2525 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2526 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2527 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2528 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2529 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2530 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2532 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2533 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2534 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2535 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2536 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2539 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2540 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2541 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2542 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2543 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2544 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2546 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2547 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2548 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2549 was not documented clearly before.
2551 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2552 This includes Tetris and Snake.
2554 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2556 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2557 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2558 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2559 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2561 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2562 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2563 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2565 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2567 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2568 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2570 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2571 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2574 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2575 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2576 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2577 file names and attributes are returned.
2579 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2580 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2581 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2582 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2585 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2586 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2588 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
2590 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2591 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2592 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2595 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2596 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2599 The new function process-running-child-p
2600 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2601 terminal to its own child process.
2603 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2604 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2605 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2606 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2608 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2609 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2611 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2612 :included is an alias for :visible.
2614 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2615 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2616 to move or copy menu entries.
2618 ** Multibyte editing changes
2620 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2621 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2622 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2623 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2624 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2625 (setq char (sref str idx)
2626 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2627 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2629 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2630 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2631 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2633 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2634 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2635 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2637 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2639 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2640 across the boundary.
2642 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2643 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2644 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2645 contains 8-bit characters.
2646 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2647 contains invalid characters.
2649 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2650 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2651 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2652 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2655 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2656 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2657 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2658 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2660 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2661 compose Thai characters in a string.
2663 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2664 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2665 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2666 menus should always use the third argument.
2668 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2669 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2670 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2671 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2673 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2674 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2675 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2676 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2678 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2679 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2680 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2683 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2685 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2686 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2687 requested feature cannot be loaded.
2689 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2690 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
2691 means to clear out that attribute.
2693 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2694 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2696 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2697 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2698 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2699 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2701 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2702 the gap of the current buffer.
2704 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2705 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2708 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2709 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2710 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2711 it back in after any modifications have been made.
2713 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2715 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2716 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2717 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2718 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2719 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2721 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2722 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2723 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2724 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2725 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2727 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2728 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2729 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2731 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2732 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2733 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2734 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2735 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2738 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2739 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2740 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2741 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2743 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
2745 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2746 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2747 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2748 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2750 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2751 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2752 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2753 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2754 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2755 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2756 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2759 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2762 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2763 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2764 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2765 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2766 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2768 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2769 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2770 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2771 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2773 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2774 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2775 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2776 something that most users not do.
2778 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2779 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2780 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2783 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2786 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2787 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2788 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2789 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2792 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2793 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2794 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2795 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2796 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2799 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2800 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2801 to be confused by TeX commands.
2803 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2804 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2805 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2806 of various alternative replacements and actions.
2808 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2809 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2810 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2811 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2812 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2814 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2815 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2817 ** Changes in input method usage.
2819 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2820 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2823 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2825 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
2826 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
2828 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
2829 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
2831 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
2833 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
2835 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
2836 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
2838 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
2839 given in the following case:
2840 o When you are using a complex input method.
2841 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
2843 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
2844 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
2845 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
2846 setting it to t is helpful.
2848 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
2850 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
2852 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
2853 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
2854 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
2855 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
2858 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
2859 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
2860 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
2863 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
2865 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
2867 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
2868 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
2870 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
2871 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
2872 its owner and group.
2874 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
2875 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
2877 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
2878 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
2880 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
2881 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
2882 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
2883 by the left edge of the rectangle.
2885 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
2886 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
2887 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
2888 for writing keyboard macros.
2890 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
2891 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
2892 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
2893 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
2894 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
2897 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
2899 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
2900 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
2903 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
2904 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
2905 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
2906 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
2908 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
2909 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
2910 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
2912 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
2913 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
2914 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
2915 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
2917 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
2918 failure if the command produces no output.
2920 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
2921 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
2924 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
2925 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
2926 function and variable names.
2928 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
2929 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
2930 file-coding-system-alist.
2932 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
2933 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
2934 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
2935 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
2936 according to the current fontset.
2938 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
2940 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
2941 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
2942 nonascii-insert-offset.
2944 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
2945 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
2946 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
2947 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
2949 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
2950 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
2952 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
2953 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
2955 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
2956 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
2959 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
2960 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
2962 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
2963 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
2964 all variables that have documentation.
2966 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
2967 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
2968 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
2969 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
2970 it should show; the default is 20.
2972 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
2973 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
2976 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
2977 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
2978 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
2979 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
2980 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
2981 Newly added options are included as well.
2983 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
2984 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
2985 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
2987 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
2990 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
2991 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
2993 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
2994 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
2997 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
2998 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
3001 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
3002 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
3003 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
3004 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
3007 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
3009 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
3010 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
3011 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
3013 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
3014 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
3015 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
3018 ** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
3019 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
3021 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
3022 read and post multi-lingual articles.
3024 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
3025 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
3026 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
3027 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
3028 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
3029 made invisible again.
3031 ** Mail reading and sending changes
3033 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
3034 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
3035 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
3038 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
3039 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
3040 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
3041 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
3042 rmail-default-body-file.
3044 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
3045 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
3046 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
3048 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
3049 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
3050 is evaluated to insert the signature.
3052 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
3053 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
3054 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
3055 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
3056 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
3057 especially interested in trying feedmail.
3059 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
3060 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
3061 provided by feedmail are:
3063 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
3064 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
3065 there is also a queue for draft messages
3067 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
3068 be prompted for confirmation
3070 **** does smart filling of address headers
3072 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
3073 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
3074 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
3076 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
3077 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
3078 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
3079 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
3083 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
3084 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
3086 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
3087 run Dired on the directory name at point.
3089 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
3090 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
3091 for a specified regexp.
3095 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
3098 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
3099 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
3102 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
3103 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
3104 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
3105 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
3107 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
3108 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
3109 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
3110 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
3111 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
3113 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
3114 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
3115 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
3116 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
3117 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
3119 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
3120 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
3121 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
3122 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
3124 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
3125 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
3126 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
3128 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
3129 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
3130 session to resolve them.
3132 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
3133 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
3134 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
3137 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
3138 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
3139 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
3140 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
3141 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
3142 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
3145 ** Changes in Font Lock
3147 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
3148 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
3149 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
3150 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
3151 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
3153 ** Frame name display changes
3155 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
3156 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
3157 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
3158 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
3160 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
3161 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
3164 ** Comint (subshell) changes
3166 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
3167 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
3168 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
3170 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
3172 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
3173 that is, the line after the last line you got.
3174 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
3176 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
3177 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
3180 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
3181 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
3182 previously sent input.
3184 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
3185 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
3186 as the search string.
3188 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
3189 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
3193 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
3194 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
3195 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
3198 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
3199 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
3200 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
3201 style is still the default however.
3203 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
3205 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
3206 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
3207 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
3209 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
3210 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
3212 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
3213 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
3215 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
3216 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
3218 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
3219 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
3221 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
3222 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
3223 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
3224 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
3226 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
3228 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
3229 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
3230 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
3232 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
3233 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
3234 expanding dynamically.
3236 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
3237 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
3239 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
3240 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
3241 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
3242 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
3244 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
3246 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3248 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
3249 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
3250 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
3251 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
3252 against the first word in the title.
3254 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
3255 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
3256 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
3257 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
3258 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
3259 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
3261 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
3262 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
3263 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
3264 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
3266 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
3268 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3269 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3270 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3271 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3272 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3273 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3275 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3276 Editing group once the package is loaded.
3278 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3279 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3280 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3282 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3283 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3287 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3288 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
3289 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3291 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
3292 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3293 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3294 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
3297 o URLs are automatically skipped
3298 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3300 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3302 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3304 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3305 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3306 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3307 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3309 *** New recursive parser.
3311 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3312 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3313 recursive parser scans the individual files.
3315 *** Parsing only part of a document.
3317 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3318 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3319 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3321 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3323 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
3325 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3327 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3329 *** Using multiple selection buffers
3331 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3332 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3334 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3336 *** References to external documents.
3338 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3339 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3340 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3341 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3342 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3343 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3344 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3346 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3348 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3349 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3351 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3352 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3354 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3356 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3357 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3359 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3361 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3362 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3363 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3364 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3365 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3366 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3369 *** Support for the varioref package
3371 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3375 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3376 and citations are created. These hooks are
3377 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3378 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
3380 *** Citations outside LaTeX
3382 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3383 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3385 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
3387 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3388 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3391 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3393 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3394 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3395 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3396 directories that contain the same file name.
3398 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3399 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3400 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3401 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3402 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3403 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3404 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3407 ** New modes and packages
3409 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3410 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3411 it, but some do not.
3413 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3416 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3417 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3420 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3422 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3423 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3424 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3425 established system of notation similar to Chess.
3427 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3428 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3429 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3431 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3432 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3433 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3434 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3435 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3438 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3439 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3441 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3442 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3443 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3444 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3446 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3448 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3449 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3450 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3451 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3452 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3453 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3454 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3455 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3456 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3457 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3458 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3460 Platform-specific modes:
3462 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3463 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3464 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3465 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3466 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3467 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3468 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3469 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3470 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3472 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3474 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3475 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3476 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3477 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3479 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3480 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3481 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3483 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3484 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3485 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3486 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3488 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3489 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3490 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3493 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3494 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3495 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3496 current input method for reading this one event.
3498 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3499 now control whether to output certain characters as
3500 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3501 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3502 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3503 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3505 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3507 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3508 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3510 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3511 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3512 always increases point by 1.
3514 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3515 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3517 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3519 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3520 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3521 default value changed. For example,
3523 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3528 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
3531 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3532 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3533 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3534 `:version' in the top level group.
3536 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3538 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3539 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3541 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3542 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3543 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3546 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3547 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3550 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
3551 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3552 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3554 ** Frame-local variables.
3556 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3557 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3558 local bindings for that variable.
3560 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3561 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3562 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3565 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3566 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3567 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3568 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3570 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3571 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3572 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3573 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3575 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3576 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3577 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3578 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3579 See the documentation in sregex.el.
3581 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3582 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3583 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3584 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3586 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3587 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3589 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3590 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3591 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3593 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3594 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3595 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3596 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3598 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3599 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3602 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3603 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3604 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3605 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3606 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3608 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3609 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3610 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3611 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3613 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3614 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3615 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3616 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3617 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3619 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3620 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3621 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3622 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3624 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3625 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3626 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3628 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3629 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3630 was directed to display this buffer.
3632 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3633 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3634 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3635 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3636 set-window-configuration.
3638 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3639 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3640 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3641 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3643 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3644 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3645 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3647 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3648 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3649 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3651 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3652 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3654 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3655 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3657 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3658 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3659 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3661 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3662 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3663 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3664 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3668 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3669 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3672 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3673 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3674 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3675 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3676 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3678 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
3680 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3681 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3682 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3683 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3686 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3687 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3688 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3689 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3690 The supported properties include
3692 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3694 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3695 item should appear in the menu.
3697 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3698 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3699 It should return a binding to use instead.
3701 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3702 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3703 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3704 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3705 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3708 This means that the command normally has no
3709 keyboard equivalent.
3710 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3711 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3712 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3713 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3714 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3716 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3717 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3719 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3723 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3724 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3725 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3726 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3728 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3730 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3731 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3732 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3733 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3734 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3735 forward, away from the user.
3737 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3739 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3740 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3741 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3742 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3743 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3745 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3747 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3748 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3749 that were dragged and dropped.
3751 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3753 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3755 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3756 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3757 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3759 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3760 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3761 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3763 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3764 in Emacs 19 and before.
3766 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3767 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3769 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3770 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3771 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3772 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3774 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3775 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3776 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3777 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3778 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3780 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3781 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3782 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3783 consistent with the new representation.
3785 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3786 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3787 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3788 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3790 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3791 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3792 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3794 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3795 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3796 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3798 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3799 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3800 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3802 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3803 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3805 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3806 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3808 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3809 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3810 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3811 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3813 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3814 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3816 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3817 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3818 buffer or string being searched.
3820 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3821 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3822 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3823 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3824 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
3825 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
3826 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
3828 *** Structure of coding system changed.
3830 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
3831 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
3832 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
3833 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
3834 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
3835 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
3836 define-coding-system-alias.
3838 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
3839 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
3840 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
3841 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
3842 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
3843 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
3844 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
3847 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
3848 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
3849 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
3850 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
3852 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
3853 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
3854 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
3855 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
3857 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
3858 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
3859 This function requires a user interaction.
3861 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
3862 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
3863 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
3864 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
3865 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
3866 select-safe-coding-system.
3868 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
3869 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
3870 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
3873 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
3874 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
3875 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
3877 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
3878 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
3879 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
3880 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
3882 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
3883 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
3884 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
3887 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
3888 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
3890 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
3891 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
3892 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
3893 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
3894 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
3895 range of characters.
3897 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
3898 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
3900 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
3901 in the current buffer at position POS.
3903 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
3904 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
3905 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
3906 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
3907 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
3908 binding input-method-function to nil.
3910 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
3911 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
3912 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
3913 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
3914 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
3916 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
3917 subsequent events of a key sequence.
3919 *** You can customize any language environment by using
3920 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
3922 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
3923 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
3924 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
3925 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
3926 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
3928 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
3930 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
3931 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
3932 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
3935 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
3936 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
3938 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
3939 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
3940 in your .emacs file.)
3942 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
3943 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
3945 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
3946 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
3948 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
3949 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
3952 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
3953 delete the character before point, as usual.
3955 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
3956 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
3957 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
3959 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
3960 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
3961 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
3962 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
3963 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
3966 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
3967 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
3968 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
3969 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
3970 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
3972 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
3973 and is an alias for it.
3975 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
3976 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
3978 ** Scrolling changes
3980 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
3981 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
3983 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
3984 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
3987 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
3988 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
3989 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
3990 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
3992 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
3993 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
3994 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
3995 recenters the window.
3997 ** International character set support (MULE)
3999 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
4000 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
4001 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
4002 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
4003 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
4004 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
4006 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
4007 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
4008 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
4009 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
4010 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
4012 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
4013 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
4014 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
4015 language, to make it possible to type them.
4017 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
4018 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
4020 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
4021 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
4023 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
4025 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
4027 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
4028 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
4029 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
4030 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
4031 characters for their work until they want to change.
4035 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
4036 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
4037 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
4038 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
4039 support several input methods.
4041 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
4042 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
4045 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
4046 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
4047 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
4048 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
4049 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
4052 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
4053 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
4054 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
4055 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
4056 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
4058 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
4059 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
4060 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
4061 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
4063 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
4064 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
4065 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
4066 the first guess is wrong.
4068 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
4069 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
4071 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
4072 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
4073 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
4074 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
4076 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
4077 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
4078 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
4079 translate automatically to and from either one.
4081 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
4083 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
4084 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
4085 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
4088 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
4089 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
4090 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
4091 multibyte characters in that buffer.
4093 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
4094 character conversion as well.
4096 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
4098 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
4099 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
4100 requires using many fonts.
4102 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
4103 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
4105 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
4106 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
4107 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
4108 you would use a font.
4110 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
4111 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
4112 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
4114 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
4115 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
4116 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
4117 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
4118 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
4120 *** Defining fontsets.
4122 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
4123 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
4124 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
4126 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
4127 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
4128 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
4129 standard fontset are created automatically.
4131 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
4132 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
4133 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
4134 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
4135 name is `fontset-startup'.
4137 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
4138 The resource value should have this form:
4139 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
4140 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
4141 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
4142 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
4143 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
4144 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
4145 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
4146 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
4147 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
4149 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
4150 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
4151 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
4153 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
4154 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
4156 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
4157 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
4158 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
4159 Here is the substitution rule:
4160 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
4161 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
4162 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
4163 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
4164 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
4166 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
4167 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
4168 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
4170 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
4171 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
4172 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
4173 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
4176 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
4177 defaults for a particular choice of language.
4179 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
4180 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
4181 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
4182 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
4183 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
4184 system for new files that you create.
4186 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
4187 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
4188 whole Emacs session.
4190 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
4191 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
4192 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
4194 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
4195 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
4196 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
4197 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
4198 coding systems that Emacs supports.
4200 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
4201 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
4202 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
4203 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
4204 is used for *the immediately following command*.
4206 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
4207 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
4209 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
4210 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
4212 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
4213 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
4215 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
4216 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
4217 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
4218 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
4221 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
4222 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
4223 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
4224 translated into that character code.
4226 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
4227 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
4229 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
4231 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
4232 the coding system for keyboard input.
4234 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
4235 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
4236 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
4238 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
4240 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
4241 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
4242 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
4243 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
4244 designed to work with terminals.
4246 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
4247 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
4248 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
4249 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
4250 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
4251 in the corresponding buffer.
4253 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
4255 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
4256 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
4257 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
4259 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
4260 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
4261 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
4264 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
4265 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
4267 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
4268 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4269 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4270 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4272 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4273 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4274 related information.
4276 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4277 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4280 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4281 information about the support for a particular language.
4282 You specify the language as an argument.
4284 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4285 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4288 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4289 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4290 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
4291 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4293 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4295 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4296 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4297 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4298 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4299 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4300 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4301 K euc-korea (Korean)
4304 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4307 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4308 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4309 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4313 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4314 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4315 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4316 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4318 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4319 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4321 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4322 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4323 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4324 Rmail files themselves.
4326 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4327 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4329 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4332 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4333 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4334 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4335 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4336 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4338 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4339 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4340 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4343 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4344 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4345 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4346 without any conversion.
4348 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4349 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4350 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4351 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4353 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4354 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4356 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4357 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4359 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4360 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4362 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4363 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4364 in the buffer before point.
4366 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4367 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4370 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4371 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4373 ** File locking works with NFS now.
4375 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4376 in the same directory as FILENAME.
4378 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4379 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4380 can become a bottleneck.
4382 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4383 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4384 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4385 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4386 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4387 so useful that the change is worth while.
4389 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4390 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4391 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4392 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4394 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4395 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4398 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4399 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4400 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4402 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4403 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4404 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4406 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4407 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4408 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4410 ** Changes in View mode.
4412 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4413 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4415 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4416 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4418 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4421 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4422 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4424 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4425 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4426 not just the selected window.
4428 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4429 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4430 turns View mode on or off.
4432 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4433 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4434 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4436 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4437 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4439 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4440 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4441 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4442 which version to compare with.
4444 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
4445 blocks if a match is inside the block.
4447 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4448 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4449 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4450 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4452 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4453 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4454 blocks, all of them or none.
4456 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4457 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4460 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4461 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4462 However, the mode will not be changed if
4463 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4464 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4465 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4466 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4468 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4470 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4471 these commands do not change the major mode.
4473 ** M-x occur changes.
4475 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4476 it performs a case-sensitive search.
4478 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4479 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4480 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4482 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4483 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4484 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4485 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4486 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4488 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4489 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4490 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4491 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4493 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4494 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4495 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4497 ** Outline mode changes.
4499 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4501 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4503 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4504 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4505 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4508 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4509 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4512 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4513 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4515 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4517 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4518 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4519 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4520 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4522 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4523 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4524 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4526 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4527 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4530 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4531 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4532 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4533 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4535 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4536 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4537 can be. The default value is 30.
4539 ** Changes in Mail mode.
4541 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4542 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4543 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4544 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4545 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4548 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4549 compose-mail-other-frame.
4551 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4552 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4553 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4554 buffer that shows the original message.
4556 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4557 with separator lines around the contents.
4559 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4560 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4561 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4562 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4564 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
4566 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4567 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4568 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4569 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4571 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4572 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4575 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4576 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4579 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4580 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4581 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4582 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4584 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4585 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4586 be taken to be magic.
4588 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4589 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4590 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4592 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4593 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4595 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4596 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4598 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4600 new key dired.el binding old key
4601 ------- ---------------- -------
4602 * c dired-change-marks c
4604 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4605 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4606 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4608 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4609 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4610 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4611 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4612 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4613 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4617 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4618 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4619 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4620 each time you run it.
4622 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4623 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4625 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4626 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4627 means to move in the opposite direction.
4629 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4630 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4632 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4633 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4634 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4635 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4640 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4642 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4645 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
4646 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4648 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4651 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4653 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4655 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4657 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4658 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4659 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4661 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4663 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4665 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4666 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4668 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4669 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4670 used to pick articles.
4672 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4673 another have been added.
4675 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4677 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4678 generating lines in buffers.
4680 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4683 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4685 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4687 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4689 *** Scores can be decayed.
4691 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4693 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4694 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4696 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4699 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4701 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
4702 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4704 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4706 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4707 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4709 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4710 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4712 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4715 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4716 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4718 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4720 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4722 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4724 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
4726 Use the `Y c' command.
4728 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4730 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4732 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4734 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4735 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
4737 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4739 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4741 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4742 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4744 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4746 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4747 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4748 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4749 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4752 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4753 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4754 particular news group. This can be done by:
4756 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4758 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4759 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4760 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4761 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4762 for reading and posting).
4764 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4765 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4766 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4767 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4770 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4771 default. Here are some of these default settings:
4773 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4774 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4775 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4776 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4777 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4779 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4780 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4784 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4785 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4786 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4787 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4788 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4791 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
4792 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
4793 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
4794 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4795 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
4796 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4798 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4799 of the current buffer.
4801 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4802 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4803 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4805 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4806 style that the Python developers like.
4808 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4809 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4810 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4814 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4815 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4816 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4818 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4819 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4822 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4823 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4825 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
4826 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
4827 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
4828 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
4830 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
4831 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
4833 ** Calendar changes.
4835 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
4836 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
4837 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
4841 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
4843 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
4845 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
4846 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
4847 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
4848 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
4849 It defaults to `letter'.
4850 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
4852 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
4853 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
4854 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
4856 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
4857 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
4860 *** Horizontal layout
4862 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
4863 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
4864 All are measured in points.
4868 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
4869 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
4870 All are measured in points.
4874 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
4875 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
4876 margin above the text.
4878 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
4879 framing box is printed around the header.
4881 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
4882 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
4884 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
4885 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
4886 `ps-header-font-size'.
4890 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
4891 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
4892 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
4893 elements to this alist.
4895 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
4896 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
4898 ** hideshow changes.
4900 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
4903 *** Support for java-mode added.
4905 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
4906 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
4908 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
4909 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
4910 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
4912 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
4913 robust and a lot faster.
4915 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
4917 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
4918 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
4919 documentation for more details.
4921 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
4923 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
4924 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
4925 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
4926 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
4927 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
4929 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
4930 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
4931 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
4932 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
4938 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
4939 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
4940 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
4941 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
4942 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
4943 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
4945 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
4947 *** Maximum decoration
4949 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
4950 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
4951 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
4952 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
4953 to get the old behavior.
4957 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
4959 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
4960 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
4962 *** Configurable support
4964 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
4965 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
4966 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
4967 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
4968 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
4969 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
4970 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
4972 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
4973 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
4974 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
4976 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
4978 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
4979 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
4982 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
4984 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
4990 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
4991 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
4992 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
4993 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
4995 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
4997 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
4998 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
4999 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
5001 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
5003 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
5004 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
5005 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
5006 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
5007 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
5008 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
5009 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
5011 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
5012 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
5013 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
5014 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
5015 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
5016 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
5018 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
5020 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
5021 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
5022 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
5023 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
5025 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
5028 ** Ada mode changes.
5030 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
5031 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
5032 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
5033 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
5036 *** There are two new commands:
5037 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
5038 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
5040 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
5041 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
5042 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
5044 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
5045 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
5046 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
5048 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
5049 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
5050 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
5051 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
5053 ** Scheme mode changes.
5055 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
5056 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
5057 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
5058 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
5061 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
5062 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
5063 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
5064 variables as buffer-local variables.
5066 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
5069 ** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
5070 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
5073 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
5074 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
5075 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
5077 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
5078 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
5081 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
5082 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
5084 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
5085 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
5088 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
5089 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
5090 these register values no longer become completely useless.
5091 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
5092 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
5093 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
5095 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
5096 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
5097 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
5098 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
5100 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
5101 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
5102 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
5103 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
5104 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
5106 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
5107 since it applies only to the current frame.
5109 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
5110 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
5111 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
5113 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
5114 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
5115 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
5116 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
5117 instead of just the file you are editing.
5121 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
5122 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
5123 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
5124 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
5125 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
5128 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
5129 knows which kind of label is needed.
5131 C-c ) reftex-reference
5132 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
5133 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
5135 C-c [ reftex-citation
5136 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
5137 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
5139 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
5140 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
5143 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
5144 can quickly jump to every section.
5146 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
5147 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
5148 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
5149 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
5150 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
5152 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5154 *** Info documentation is now available.
5156 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
5157 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
5159 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
5160 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
5162 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
5163 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
5165 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
5166 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
5167 appropriate functions.
5169 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
5170 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
5172 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
5175 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
5176 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
5178 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
5181 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
5182 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
5183 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
5185 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
5186 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
5187 prefixed with `ALT'.
5189 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
5190 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
5191 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
5194 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
5195 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
5196 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
5198 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
5199 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
5201 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
5202 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
5203 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
5205 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
5207 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
5209 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
5212 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
5213 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
5216 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
5219 *** Added support for imenu.
5221 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
5222 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
5223 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
5224 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
5226 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
5227 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
5229 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
5231 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
5232 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
5233 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
5236 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
5237 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
5239 ** browse-url changes
5241 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
5242 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
5243 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
5244 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
5245 customization variables.
5247 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
5249 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
5250 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
5251 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
5255 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
5256 pops up the Info file for this command.
5258 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
5259 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
5260 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
5263 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
5264 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
5265 files in the same directory.
5267 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
5268 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5269 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5273 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
5274 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
5276 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
5277 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
5278 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5279 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5280 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5281 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5282 color when Viper is in insert state.
5283 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5284 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5285 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5289 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5290 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5291 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5292 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5293 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5295 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5297 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5298 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5300 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5301 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5302 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5304 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5305 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5306 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5307 methods and protocols.
5309 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5310 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5311 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5314 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5315 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5316 at least M times and as many as N times.
5318 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5319 in files has changed slightly.
5321 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5322 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5323 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5324 with old time-stamp-format values.
5326 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5327 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5328 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5331 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5332 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5333 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5334 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5335 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5336 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5338 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5339 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5340 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5342 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5343 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5344 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5345 recommended now will continue to work then.
5347 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5350 ** There are some additional major modes:
5352 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5353 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5354 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5356 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5357 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5360 ** New Lisp packages include:
5362 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5364 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5365 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5367 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5369 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5372 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5373 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5376 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5377 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5378 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5379 strings or comments.
5381 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5382 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5383 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5384 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5387 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5388 can visit them by short forms of their names.
5390 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5391 Emacs Lisp function at point.
5393 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5395 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5396 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5398 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5400 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5402 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5404 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5405 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5407 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5408 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5409 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5410 original place after inserting the copy.
5412 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5415 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5416 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5417 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5419 Enable mouse-drag with:
5420 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5422 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5424 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5425 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5427 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5428 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5432 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5433 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5434 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5435 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5436 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5437 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5438 instance) and vice versa.
5440 To use this package load it using
5441 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5442 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
5443 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
5444 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5445 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5446 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5448 *** Interface to ph.
5450 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5452 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5453 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5456 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5458 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5459 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5460 while the real cursor does not move.
5462 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5463 for visiting your favorite web sites.
5465 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5466 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5470 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5471 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5472 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5473 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5475 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5477 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5479 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5481 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5482 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5483 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5484 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5485 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5487 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5488 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5489 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5490 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5491 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5492 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5494 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5496 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5497 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5498 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5499 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5501 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5502 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5504 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5505 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5508 ** Basic Lisp changes
5510 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5511 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5513 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5514 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5517 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5519 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5521 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5522 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5524 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5525 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5528 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5530 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5532 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5534 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5535 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5536 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5539 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5540 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5541 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5543 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5544 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5545 adding one of these suffixes.
5547 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5548 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
5549 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
5551 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5552 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5554 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5556 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5557 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5559 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5560 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5562 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5564 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5565 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5567 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5568 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5569 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5570 works using `save-current-buffer'.
5572 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5573 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5576 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5577 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5578 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5581 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5582 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5585 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5587 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5588 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5589 Then it returns that string.
5591 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5593 (with-output-to-string
5594 (princ "The buffer is ")
5595 (princ (buffer-name)))
5597 returns "The buffer is foo".
5599 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5602 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5603 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5604 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5606 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5607 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5609 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5610 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5611 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5612 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5613 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5614 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5616 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5617 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5618 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5621 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5622 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5623 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5624 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5625 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5627 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5628 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5629 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5630 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5632 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5633 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5635 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
5637 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5638 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5639 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5640 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5643 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5644 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5647 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5649 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5650 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5651 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5652 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5653 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5655 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5657 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5658 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5659 more than the number of characters.
5661 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5662 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5663 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5664 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5665 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5666 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5668 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5669 and returns a string containing those characters.
5671 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5672 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5673 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5674 character, sref signals an error.
5676 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5677 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5678 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5680 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5681 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5682 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5684 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5685 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5686 to a vector of the characters in it.
5688 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5689 of a string. You call it as follows:
5691 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5693 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5694 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5695 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5696 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5697 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5699 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5700 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5702 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5703 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5705 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5706 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5707 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5708 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5710 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5712 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5714 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5715 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5716 are not included in the resulting value.
5718 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5719 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5720 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5721 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5723 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5724 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5725 character extends across that column), then the padding character
5726 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5727 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5728 column START-COLUMN.
5730 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5731 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5732 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5733 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5734 changed text, before the change.
5736 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5737 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5738 one character set for each script, not for each language.
5740 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5742 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5744 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5745 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5747 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5748 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5749 which identify the character within that character set.
5751 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5752 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5753 opposite of split-char.
5755 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5756 of all the characters between BEG and END.
5758 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5759 of all the characters in a string.
5761 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5762 and specifying coding systems.
5764 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5765 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5766 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5767 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5768 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5769 as what to do about code conversion.)
5771 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5772 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5774 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5775 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5776 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5778 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5779 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5780 to match against a file name.
5782 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5783 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5784 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5785 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5786 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5787 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5789 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5790 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5792 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5793 the coding system to use for network sockets.
5795 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5796 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5797 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5800 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5801 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5802 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5803 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5804 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5805 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5807 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5808 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5810 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5811 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5812 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5813 start the subprocess.
5815 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5816 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5817 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5818 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5819 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5821 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5822 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5825 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
5826 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
5827 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
5828 connection permanently or until overridden.
5830 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
5831 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
5832 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
5833 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
5834 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
5835 system for one operation at a time.
5837 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
5838 files, subprocesses or network connections.
5840 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
5841 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
5842 The value is a cons cell,
5843 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
5844 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
5845 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
5846 input to the subprocess.
5848 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
5849 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
5851 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
5852 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
5853 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
5855 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
5856 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
5857 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
5858 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
5861 Thus, instead of writing
5863 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
5864 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
5866 you would now write this:
5868 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
5869 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
5873 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
5874 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
5875 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
5876 for a description of them.
5878 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
5879 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
5881 (defgroup ispell nil
5882 "Spell checking using Ispell."
5885 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
5886 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
5887 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
5888 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
5889 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
5891 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
5892 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
5893 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
5894 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
5895 first-level subgroups.
5897 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
5899 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
5900 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
5904 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
5905 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
5906 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
5907 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
5908 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
5909 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
5911 ** Text property changes
5913 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
5916 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
5917 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
5918 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
5919 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
5920 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
5922 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
5923 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
5924 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
5925 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
5927 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
5928 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
5929 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
5931 ** Changes in invisibility features
5933 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
5934 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
5935 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
5936 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
5937 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
5938 make the overlay visible.
5940 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
5941 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
5942 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
5943 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
5944 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
5945 t when it should hide it.
5947 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
5949 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
5950 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
5951 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
5952 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
5953 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
5954 Here is an example of how to do this:
5956 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
5957 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5958 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
5959 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5962 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
5965 ;; When done with the overlays:
5966 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5968 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5970 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
5972 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
5973 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
5974 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
5975 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
5977 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
5978 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
5979 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
5981 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
5982 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
5984 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
5985 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
5987 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
5988 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
5989 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
5991 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
5992 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
5993 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
5994 determine the syntax type of the character.
5996 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
5997 of the current buffer.
5999 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
6000 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
6001 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
6003 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
6004 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
6005 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
6006 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
6007 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
6009 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
6012 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
6013 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
6014 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
6016 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
6017 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
6018 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
6019 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
6020 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
6022 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
6023 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
6024 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
6026 ** Changes in face features
6028 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
6029 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
6031 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
6032 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
6034 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
6035 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
6037 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
6038 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
6040 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
6041 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
6042 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
6043 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
6046 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
6047 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
6049 ** Changes in file-handling functions
6051 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
6052 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
6053 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
6054 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
6056 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
6059 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
6060 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
6062 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
6063 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
6065 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
6066 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
6068 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
6069 character code conversion as well as other things.
6071 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
6072 (formerly it did not).
6074 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
6075 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
6077 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
6078 instead of constant strings.
6080 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
6081 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
6082 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
6084 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
6085 in the same way as before.
6087 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
6088 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
6089 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
6091 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
6092 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
6093 else, and returns nil.
6095 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
6096 directory cannot be listed.
6098 ** Changes in minibuffer input
6100 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
6101 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
6102 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
6103 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
6106 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
6107 It is available through the history command M-n.
6109 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
6110 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
6111 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
6112 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
6113 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
6115 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
6116 argument in this way.
6118 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
6119 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
6120 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
6122 ** Echo area features
6124 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
6125 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
6126 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
6127 after the echo area is cleared.
6129 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
6130 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
6132 ** Keyboard input features
6134 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
6135 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
6137 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
6138 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
6141 ** Frame-related changes
6143 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
6144 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
6145 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
6147 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
6148 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
6149 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
6151 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6152 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
6153 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
6154 in the selected frame.
6156 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
6157 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
6158 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
6160 ** X Windows features
6162 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
6163 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
6164 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
6166 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
6167 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
6169 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
6170 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
6171 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
6173 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
6174 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
6176 ** Subprocess features
6178 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
6179 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
6182 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
6183 and returns the output from the command as a string.
6185 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
6186 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
6188 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
6189 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
6191 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
6192 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
6193 goes after the other menu items.
6195 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
6196 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
6197 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
6200 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
6201 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
6203 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
6204 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
6207 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
6208 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
6209 but its hook is still run.
6211 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
6212 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
6214 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
6215 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
6216 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
6218 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
6219 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
6220 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
6223 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
6224 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
6226 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
6227 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
6228 functions like display-time.
6230 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
6231 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
6233 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
6234 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
6235 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
6237 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
6238 if there is an error in compilation.
6240 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
6241 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
6242 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
6243 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
6245 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
6246 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
6247 the *scratch* buffer.
6249 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
6250 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
6251 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
6252 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
6254 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
6255 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
6256 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
6258 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
6259 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
6260 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
6261 and compose-mail-other-frame.
6263 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
6264 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
6265 full name of the specified user will be returned.
6267 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
6268 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6269 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6270 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6271 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6274 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6275 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6276 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6277 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6279 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6280 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6281 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6282 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6284 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6286 ** imenu.el changes.
6288 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
6289 item from menu created by imenu.
6291 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6292 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6293 select one of those items.
6295 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6297 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6299 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6300 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6302 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6303 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6304 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6306 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6308 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6309 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6311 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6312 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6313 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6314 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6315 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6318 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6319 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6321 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6322 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6323 as in previous Emacs versions.
6325 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6326 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6327 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6330 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6331 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6332 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6333 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6336 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6337 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6338 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6339 line and then executing the macro.
6341 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6343 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6344 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6345 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6350 *** Font Lock support modes
6352 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6353 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6354 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6355 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6356 Font Lock mode is enabled.
6358 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6360 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6366 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6367 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6368 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6369 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6370 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6371 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6372 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6374 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6376 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6378 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6380 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6382 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6385 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6390 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6391 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6392 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6393 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6395 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6396 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6398 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
6399 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6402 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6403 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6405 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6407 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6409 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6411 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
6414 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6416 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6418 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6420 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6422 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
6425 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6427 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6429 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6431 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6433 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6435 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6437 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6439 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6442 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6444 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6447 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6449 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
6450 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
6452 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6454 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6456 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6458 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6460 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6463 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6465 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6466 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6468 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6469 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6470 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6472 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6473 articles with the `*' command.
6475 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6477 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
6479 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6481 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6483 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
6484 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6486 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
6489 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6491 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6493 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6495 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6497 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
6499 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6501 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
6503 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6505 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
6507 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
6508 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6510 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
6513 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6515 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6516 buffer to allow easier treatment.
6518 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6520 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6522 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6524 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
6527 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6529 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
6531 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6532 cited text to hide is now customizable.
6534 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6536 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
6538 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6540 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6542 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6544 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6547 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6549 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6550 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6551 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6554 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6557 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6560 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6561 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6564 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6565 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6566 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6567 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6568 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6571 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6573 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6575 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6576 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6577 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6578 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6579 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6581 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6582 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6583 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
6585 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6587 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6588 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6589 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6590 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6591 chapter of the manual for details.
6593 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6594 customization variables take effect.
6596 ** Marking with the mouse.
6598 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6599 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6600 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6602 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6604 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6606 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6607 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6609 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6610 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6611 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6612 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6613 applications, these problems are significant.
6615 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6616 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6617 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6618 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6619 other DOS application as a subprocess.
6621 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6622 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6624 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6625 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6626 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6627 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6628 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6629 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6631 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6633 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6634 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6635 minibuffer contains.
6637 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6639 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6640 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6641 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6642 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6644 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6645 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6646 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6647 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6649 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6650 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6652 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6653 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6654 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6656 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6657 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6658 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6659 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6661 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6663 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6664 to replace the characters it "deletes".
6666 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6668 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6669 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6670 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6671 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6672 immediately after the selected one.
6674 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6675 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6677 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6679 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6680 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6681 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6682 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6685 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6686 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6689 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6690 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6691 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6692 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6693 now that the bug is fixed.
6695 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6697 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6698 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6699 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6700 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6702 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6703 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6704 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6705 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6707 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6708 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6709 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6711 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6712 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6713 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6714 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6717 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6718 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6720 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6721 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6722 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6723 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6725 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6726 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6727 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6728 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6729 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6730 `mail-directory-stream'.)
6732 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6733 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6734 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6735 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6737 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6738 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6739 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6741 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6742 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6743 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6744 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6745 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6746 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6747 to a limitation in font-lock).
6749 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6751 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6752 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6753 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6756 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6757 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6759 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6761 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6763 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6765 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6767 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6768 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6769 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6770 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6771 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6772 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6774 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6777 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6778 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6780 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6785 *** Global Font Lock mode
6787 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6788 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6789 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6790 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6791 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6793 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6795 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6799 *** Local Refontification
6801 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6802 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6803 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6804 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6806 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6807 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6808 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6809 above and below point.
6811 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6815 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6816 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6817 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6818 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6819 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6822 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6824 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
6825 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
6827 ** hide-show changes.
6829 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
6830 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
6833 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
6834 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
6836 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
6837 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
6838 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
6842 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
6843 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
6845 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
6846 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
6848 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
6850 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
6851 pressing both mouse buttons.
6853 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
6854 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
6857 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
6860 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
6862 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
6863 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
6865 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
6867 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
6869 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
6871 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
6873 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
6875 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
6877 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
6878 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
6879 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
6880 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
6881 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
6883 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
6885 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
6886 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
6887 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
6890 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
6893 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
6895 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
6896 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
6898 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
6899 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
6901 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
6902 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
6903 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
6905 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
6906 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
6909 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6911 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
6912 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
6913 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
6915 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
6916 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
6917 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
6919 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
6920 up if too much time passes.
6922 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
6924 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
6925 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
6926 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
6929 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
6930 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
6931 call looks like this:
6933 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6935 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
6936 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
6937 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
6940 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
6941 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
6944 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
6945 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
6946 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
6947 each time Emacs becomes idle.
6949 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
6950 idle for SECS seconds.
6952 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
6953 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
6954 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
6957 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
6958 there is no answer within a certain time.
6960 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
6962 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
6963 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
6964 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
6966 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
6967 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
6968 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
6969 arguments in between are ignored.
6971 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
6972 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
6974 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
6975 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
6976 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
6977 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
6980 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
6981 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
6982 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
6983 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
6984 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
6985 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
6987 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
6988 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
6989 systems with limited file name syntax.
6991 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
6992 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
6993 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
6996 (defvar save-completions-file-name
6997 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
6998 "*The filename to save completions to.")
7000 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
7001 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
7002 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
7003 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
7004 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
7006 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
7007 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
7008 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
7010 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
7011 marker from its buffer position.
7013 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
7014 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
7015 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
7017 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
7018 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
7019 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
7020 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
7021 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
7022 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
7024 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
7025 errors that happen often during editing.
7027 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
7028 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
7029 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
7031 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
7032 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
7034 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
7035 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
7036 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
7037 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
7038 and not get-buffer-window.
7040 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
7041 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
7042 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
7044 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
7045 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
7046 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
7047 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
7048 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
7049 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
7050 over and over for the same text.
7052 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
7054 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
7055 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
7057 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
7060 in addition to the normal
7064 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
7065 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
7066 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
7068 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7070 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
7071 Copyright information:
7073 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7075 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7076 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7077 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7078 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7080 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7081 of this document, or of portions of it,
7082 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7083 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7087 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"