1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2001-03-15
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 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 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and
12 fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra
13 charsets in this release.
15 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
17 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
19 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
20 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
22 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
23 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
26 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
27 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
29 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
30 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
32 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
33 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
34 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to
35 build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any
36 necessary changes to unexec.
38 ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the
39 new display features described below.
41 ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement
42 all of the new display features described below. The port currently
43 lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the
44 "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the
45 description of aspects specific to the Mac.
48 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
50 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
52 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
53 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
54 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
55 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
58 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
60 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
61 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
62 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
63 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
66 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
67 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
68 under Lisp changes, below.
70 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
72 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
73 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
74 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
75 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
76 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
77 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
80 The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now
81 supported on character terminals.
83 ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X.
86 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
88 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
89 longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it
90 is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum
91 minibuffer window size by setting the following variables:
93 - User option: max-mini-window-height
95 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
96 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
97 specifies a number of lines.
101 - User option: resize-mini-windows
103 How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always
104 resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows
105 grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk
108 Default is `grow-only'.
112 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see
113 <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will need version 0.92 or later.
115 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
117 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
118 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
121 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
123 Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for
124 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when
125 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
126 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
127 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
130 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
131 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
132 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
133 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
134 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
135 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
137 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
138 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
139 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
140 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
141 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
142 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
144 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
145 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
146 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
147 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
148 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
151 ** Automatic Hscrolling
153 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
154 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
157 If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or
158 scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound
159 for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll
160 the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more
161 to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc.
166 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
167 of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level
168 changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is
169 displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved
170 if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome
173 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
174 for specific modes (with copyright assignments). Contributions would
175 also be useful manually to touch up some of the PBM icons.
180 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
181 mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can
182 turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
184 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
185 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
186 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
187 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
190 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
191 of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is
192 solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option
193 `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the
194 cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if
195 non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can be customized.
197 ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display
198 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
199 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
200 customizing face `fringe'.
202 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default.
203 You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'.
204 In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D
205 appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line
206 occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of
207 the window to be partially obscured.)
209 The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older
210 versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, now defaults to nil,
211 and its use is deprecated.
214 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
216 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
217 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
218 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
219 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
220 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
222 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
224 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
227 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
228 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
230 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
232 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
233 `*') toggles the status.
235 - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu.
240 Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can
241 turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
246 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
247 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
248 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
252 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
254 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
255 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
256 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
259 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
260 have to do anything to activate it.
263 ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been
264 changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a
267 ** The <home> and <end> keys now move to the beginning or end of the
268 current line, respectively. C-<home> and C-<end> move to the
269 beginning and end of the buffer.
271 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
272 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
275 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
276 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
279 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
280 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
283 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
284 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
287 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
289 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
290 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
291 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
293 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
294 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
295 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
297 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
301 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
303 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
304 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
305 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
306 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
307 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
311 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
312 all frames except the selected one.
314 ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to
315 let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting.
318 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
319 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
321 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs
322 header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window),
323 so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled.
324 This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option
325 `Info-use-header-line'.
328 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
329 mode `iswitchb-mode'.
332 ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore.
333 If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with
336 ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card
337 have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex',
338 `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included.
340 ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available.
342 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
343 `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in
347 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
348 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
349 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
350 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
352 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
353 a version-dependent component.
355 ** The new user-option `delete-key-deletes-forward' can be set to
356 let the Delete function key delete forward instead of backward.
358 On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen
359 according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace
360 key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the
361 option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to
362 delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward.
364 If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes
365 a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the
366 Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via
367 `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on
368 the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting if you don't
369 have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys.
371 Programmatically, you can call function
372 delete-key-deletes-forward-mode to toggle the behavior of the Delete
376 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
377 point in a pop-up window.
380 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
381 under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or
382 customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'.
384 The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
385 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
388 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
389 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
390 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
391 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
394 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
396 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
397 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
400 ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows.
401 This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on
402 MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made
403 before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now.
405 ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom
408 ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the
409 behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values
412 `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space;
413 `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces;
414 `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines;
415 nil -- just delete one character.
417 Default value is `untabify'.
419 [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.]
421 ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face
422 symbol, not double-quoted.
424 ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future
425 version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline,
426 rnews, rnewspost. Their implementations have been moved to
430 ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding
431 system for keyboard input.
434 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
435 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
438 ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces Emacs to behave
439 as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons. This comes handy
440 with mice that don't report their number of buttons correctly. One
441 example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons, but clicks on the
442 middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version of Emacs.
444 ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the
445 trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add
446 this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'.
448 ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will
449 be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is
452 ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el.
453 To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the
454 `auto-compression-mode' command.
456 ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for
457 `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME.
460 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
461 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
464 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
465 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
470 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
471 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
472 internationalization and mail-fetching.
474 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
475 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
477 If you used procmail like in
479 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
480 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
481 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
482 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
484 this now has changed to
487 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
490 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
491 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
493 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
494 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
495 Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no
496 longer work; remove them and use the native facilities.
498 The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to
499 use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was
500 installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier.
502 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
503 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There
504 are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is
505 now just a compatibility layer.
507 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
508 called to position point.
510 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
511 summary buffers and NOV files.
513 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
514 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
516 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
517 subtly different manner.
519 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
520 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
521 ever-changing layouts.
523 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
525 *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support.
528 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
529 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
530 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
531 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
532 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
535 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
536 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
537 file that is already visited under a different name.
539 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
540 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
542 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
543 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
544 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
545 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
546 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
547 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
550 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
551 and displays information about that.
553 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
554 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
556 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
557 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
558 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
559 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
560 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
561 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
563 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
564 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
567 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
568 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
569 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
570 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
571 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
572 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
573 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
576 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
577 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
578 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
579 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
580 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
581 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
582 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
583 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
584 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
586 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
587 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
590 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
591 displays all characters in that character set.
593 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
594 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
597 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
598 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
599 defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region
600 commenting with the variable `comment-style'.
603 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
604 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
605 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
606 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
609 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
610 on the display using several methods
613 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
614 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
615 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
618 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
619 equivalent to specifying the frame parameter.
621 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
623 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
624 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
627 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
628 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
629 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
630 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
633 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
634 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
635 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
637 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
638 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
641 ** New X resources recognized
643 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
644 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
645 is useful for debugging X problems.
649 emacs.synchronous: true
651 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
652 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
653 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
654 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
655 visual class names are
664 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
665 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
668 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
669 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
670 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
675 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
677 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
678 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
679 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
680 resource values are `true' or `on'.
684 emacs.privateColormap: true
687 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
689 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
690 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
692 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
693 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
694 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
695 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
697 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
698 read mail from the menu etc.
701 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
702 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
704 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
706 *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
710 -------------------------
716 C-c C-o @<block> ... @end <block>
719 *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context.
721 ** Changes in Outline mode.
723 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
724 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
725 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
727 ** Changes to Emacs Server
730 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
731 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
732 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
733 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
734 buffers to kill, as before.
736 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
737 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
740 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
742 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
743 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
744 use. Default is 1000.
747 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
748 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
751 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
752 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
753 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
756 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
757 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
758 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
760 ** Faces and frame parameters.
762 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
763 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
764 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
765 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
766 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
767 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
768 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
770 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
771 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
772 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
773 `default' face and vice versa.
778 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
779 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
780 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
783 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
785 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
786 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
787 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
788 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
790 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
791 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
792 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
794 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
797 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
799 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
800 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
801 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
802 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
804 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
807 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
809 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
811 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
814 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
819 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
820 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
821 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
824 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
825 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
826 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
827 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
828 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
829 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
831 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
834 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
836 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
837 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
838 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
841 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
842 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
844 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
845 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
846 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
849 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
851 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
852 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a
853 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
854 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
856 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
857 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a
858 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
859 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
861 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
862 notably at the end of lines.
864 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
865 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
868 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
870 ** `C-x r t' (string-rectangle) no longer deletes the existing
871 rectangle contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
872 The `replace-rectangle' command can be used if deletion is required.
874 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
875 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
876 after each match to get the replacement text.
879 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
880 you edit the replacement string.
882 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
883 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
884 lisp-complete-symbol.
886 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
888 ** Changes to hideshow.el
890 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
892 A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings),
893 and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp
894 serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate.
895 See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'.
897 *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active,
898 hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can
899 be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of
902 *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a
903 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of
904 the normal block-hiding function.
906 *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed.
908 *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions,
909 roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix
910 for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation
913 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
916 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
917 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
918 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
921 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
925 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
929 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
930 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
933 *** Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
934 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
935 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized.
936 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
938 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting.
940 ** Changes to cmuscheme
942 *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed
943 `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el.
945 ** Changes in Font Lock
947 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
948 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode.
950 *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should
951 set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults.
953 *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose
954 the face used for each string/comment.
956 *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'.
957 Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code".
959 ** Comint (subshell) changes
961 These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which
962 include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc.
964 *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp'
965 to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which
966 parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the
967 user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use
968 this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line,
969 respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this
970 feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option
971 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'.
973 *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
974 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
976 *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
977 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
978 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
980 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
981 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
982 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
984 *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts,
985 and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features,
986 see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
988 *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s')
989 saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix
990 argument, it appends to the file.
992 *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output'
993 (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for
996 *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input
999 *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for
1000 identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp
1001 strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#".
1003 ** Changes to Rmail mode
1005 *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
1006 set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when
1007 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
1008 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
1009 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
1012 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
1013 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
1014 regexp matching your mail addresses.
1016 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
1017 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
1018 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
1019 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
1020 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
1022 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
1025 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
1026 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
1029 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
1030 in which folder to put messages automatically.
1032 *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message
1033 with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly
1034 due to missing or malformed "charset=" header.
1036 ** Changes to TeX mode
1038 *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
1041 *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm.
1043 *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs.
1045 *** Added support for outline-minor-mode.
1047 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
1049 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
1050 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
1051 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
1052 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
1053 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
1054 can be edited from that buffer.
1056 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
1057 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
1058 `A' to use all marked entries).
1060 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
1061 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
1063 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
1064 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
1065 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
1068 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
1069 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
1070 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
1071 in column 1 are always made leaves.
1073 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
1074 has the following new features:
1076 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
1077 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
1078 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
1079 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
1081 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
1082 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
1083 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
1084 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
1085 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
1088 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
1092 ** Customize changes
1094 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
1095 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
1096 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
1098 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
1099 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
1102 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
1103 between custom options. Example:
1105 (defcustom default-input-method nil
1106 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
1107 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
1108 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
1110 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
1111 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
1113 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
1114 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
1115 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
1117 ** New features in evaluation commands
1119 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
1120 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
1121 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
1122 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
1123 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
1125 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
1126 code when called with a prefix argument.
1131 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
1132 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
1133 spell-checks the current buffer.
1136 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
1139 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
1140 correction is made and re-checked.
1142 *** An Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definition has been added.
1144 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
1147 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
1150 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
1155 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
1156 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
1157 is, delete only empty directories.
1159 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
1160 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
1161 copy directories recursively.
1163 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
1164 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
1165 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
1167 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
1168 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
1171 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
1172 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
1173 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
1174 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
1175 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
1177 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
1180 *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use
1181 of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename,
1182 which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single
1183 source file, not when operating on multiple marked files.
1185 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
1186 use the -f option when sending mail.
1190 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
1191 current user setups (although it's believed that these
1192 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
1193 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
1194 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
1195 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
1198 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
1199 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
1200 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
1201 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
1202 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
1205 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
1206 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
1207 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
1208 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
1209 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
1210 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
1212 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
1213 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
1214 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
1215 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
1216 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
1217 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
1218 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
1219 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
1221 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
1222 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
1223 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
1224 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
1227 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
1228 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
1229 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
1230 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
1231 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
1232 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
1233 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
1234 function documentation for more info.
1236 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
1237 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
1238 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
1239 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
1240 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
1241 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
1242 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
1243 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
1245 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
1247 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
1248 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
1250 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
1251 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
1252 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
1253 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
1254 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
1257 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
1258 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
1259 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
1262 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
1263 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
1264 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
1265 chapter about this in the manual.
1267 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
1268 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
1269 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
1270 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
1271 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
1273 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
1274 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
1275 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
1277 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
1278 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
1280 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
1281 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
1282 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
1285 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
1286 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
1287 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
1288 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
1291 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
1292 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
1293 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
1296 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
1297 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
1298 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
1299 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1302 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1303 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1304 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1305 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1306 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1308 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1309 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1310 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1312 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1314 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1315 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1316 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1317 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1319 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1320 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1321 the column specified by comment-column.
1323 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1324 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1325 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1326 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1327 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1328 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1330 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1331 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1334 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1336 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1337 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1338 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1339 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1342 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1344 ** Makefile mode changes
1346 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1348 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1349 Fontlock mode is active.
1353 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1354 so that searches can be resumed.
1356 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1357 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1358 that started the search.
1360 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1361 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1364 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1366 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1367 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1368 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1369 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1370 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1371 `secondary-selection'.
1373 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1374 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1375 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1376 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1377 usual snappy response.
1379 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1380 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1381 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1382 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1385 ** Changes in sort.el
1387 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1388 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1389 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
1392 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1395 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1396 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1397 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1399 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1400 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1402 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1403 output ^M at the end of lines.
1405 ** Shell script mode changes.
1407 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1408 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and
1409 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1413 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1415 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1416 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1417 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1418 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1419 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1421 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1422 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1424 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1425 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1427 *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags
1428 automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or
1429 `template' keywords.
1431 *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in
1432 C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels.
1434 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1437 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1439 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1441 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1444 *** In makefiles, tags the targets.
1446 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1447 variables are tagged.
1449 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1451 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1455 ** Changes in etags.el
1457 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1458 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1459 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1461 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1462 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1464 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1465 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1466 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1467 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1469 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1471 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1472 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1474 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1476 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1477 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1478 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1480 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1481 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1483 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1484 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1486 *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself.
1487 If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c
1488 /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c",
1489 "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name,
1490 point will go to the beginning of the file.
1492 *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if
1493 auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search
1494 (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files.
1496 *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point
1497 in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is
1498 found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring.
1501 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1502 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1503 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1506 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1507 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1508 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1509 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have
1510 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts.
1511 There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only)
1515 ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'.
1516 These new environments mainly select appropriate translations
1519 ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for
1520 function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs
1521 Lisp Coding Convention".
1523 new command old-binding
1524 --- ------- -----------
1525 f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5
1526 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5
1527 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5
1529 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged
1530 S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged
1531 C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged
1533 S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3
1534 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6
1535 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7
1536 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8
1537 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged
1538 C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2
1541 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1542 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1543 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1545 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1548 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1551 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
1552 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1553 expression from that list, are not checked.
1555 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1556 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1557 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1558 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1560 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1563 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
1564 displays local abbrevs, only.
1568 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
1569 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
1570 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
1571 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
1572 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
1573 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify
1574 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
1575 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
1576 file is registered in that backend.
1578 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
1579 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
1580 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
1581 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
1582 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
1583 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
1585 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
1586 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
1587 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
1588 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
1589 where it doesn't make sense.)
1591 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
1592 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
1593 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
1597 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
1598 checks are always done now.
1600 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
1603 `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'.
1604 `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'.
1605 `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'.
1607 The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the
1608 first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the
1609 current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into
1610 the working file (``merge news'').
1612 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1613 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work
1616 *** Multiple Backends
1618 VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is
1619 useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS
1620 repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally
1621 commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your
1624 To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example)
1625 should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote''
1626 backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of
1627 `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.)
1629 You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing
1630 C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as
1631 a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend
1632 if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the
1633 current revision number from the more remote backend.
1635 If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to
1636 another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change
1637 any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to
1638 pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally.
1640 After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your
1641 changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the
1642 local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry
1643 buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file.
1647 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
1648 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
1649 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
1650 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
1651 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
1652 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
1653 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
1655 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of
1656 repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and
1657 revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without
1658 any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version
1659 backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version
1660 number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~
1661 (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter
1662 of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other,
1663 the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted
1664 automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS,
1665 since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file
1668 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
1669 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
1670 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
1671 commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the
1672 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
1673 entire directory tree.
1675 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
1676 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
1677 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
1678 "watched" by other developers.)
1680 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1681 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give
1682 an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update',
1683 starting at the given directory.
1685 *** Lisp Changes in VC
1687 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
1688 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
1689 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
1690 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
1691 a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which
1692 provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top
1693 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
1694 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol
1695 `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
1697 ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT
1698 SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more
1699 terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs.
1700 See etc/edt-user.doc for more information.
1702 ** New modes and packages
1704 *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode'
1705 automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when
1706 the default is not applicable.
1708 *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines,
1709 rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The
1710 shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \.
1714 - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is
1715 drawn, like this: | \ /
1719 - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the
1720 result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If
1721 your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a
1722 pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will
1723 then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line
1726 - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight)
1727 poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >.
1729 - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by
1732 - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular
1733 regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be
1734 turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in
1735 artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa.
1737 - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can
1738 also do without the mouse.
1740 - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to
1741 reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares
1742 and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your
1743 ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio,
1744 the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round.
1746 - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented:
1748 lines straight-lines
1750 poly-lines straight poly-lines
1752 text (see-thru) text (overwrite)
1753 spray-can setting size for spraying
1754 vaporize line vaporize lines
1755 erase characters erase rectangles
1757 Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or
1758 diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in
1759 the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while
1762 It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines
1763 (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are
1764 straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired
1765 by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>.
1767 - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this
1771 *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell
1772 implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it.
1773 It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp
1774 functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports
1775 history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It
1776 will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of
1777 the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been
1778 rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell,
1779 all within the scope of your Emacs process.
1782 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1783 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1784 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1785 on certain projects.
1788 *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches
1789 of interactively entered regexps. For example,
1791 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1793 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1794 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1795 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1796 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1797 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1798 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1799 corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches
1800 to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match.
1803 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1806 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1807 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1809 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1810 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1811 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1812 `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only
1813 comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary.
1816 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1817 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1818 separate Texinfo file.
1821 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1822 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1823 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1824 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1825 enter check-in log messages.
1828 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1829 without invoking external programs.
1831 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1832 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1833 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1834 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1835 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1837 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1838 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1841 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1842 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1844 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1845 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1846 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1847 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1848 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1851 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1852 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1853 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1854 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1857 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1858 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1859 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1861 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1864 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1866 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1868 ; comment (until end of line)
1872 $A default non-terminal
1873 $"C" default terminal
1874 $?C? default special
1875 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1876 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1877 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1878 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1879 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1880 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1881 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1882 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1883 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1884 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1885 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1886 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1887 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1888 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1889 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1891 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1893 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1894 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1895 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1896 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1897 equal signs of assignments.
1900 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1901 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1904 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1905 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1906 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1907 customize the package.
1909 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1911 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1912 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1913 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1914 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1915 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1916 which answers different needs.
1919 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1920 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1921 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1922 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1923 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1927 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1928 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1931 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1934 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1936 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1938 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and
1939 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
1940 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
1941 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
1942 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
1943 and background colors.
1945 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1949 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1952 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1955 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1957 *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus
1958 whitespace in a file.
1960 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1961 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1962 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1963 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1964 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1965 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1966 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1968 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1970 Here is an example of columns:
1973 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1974 porcupine strawberry airplane
1976 Doing the following settings:
1978 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1979 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1980 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1981 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1984 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1986 M-x delimit-columns-region
1990 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1991 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1992 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1994 delim-col has the following options:
1996 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1999 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
2000 between each column.
2002 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
2005 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
2008 delim-col has the following commands:
2010 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
2011 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
2014 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
2015 were operated on recently.
2017 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
2019 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
2020 recentf at Emacs startup.
2022 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
2023 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
2024 file list can be displayed:
2026 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
2027 - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending.
2028 - showing paths relative to the current default-directory
2030 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
2031 dynamically change the menu appearance.
2033 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
2037 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
2038 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
2039 specific to Message mode.
2042 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
2043 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
2044 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
2047 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
2048 interface to access directory servers using different directory
2049 protocols. It has a separate manual.
2051 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
2052 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
2055 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
2057 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
2058 minibuffer with completion.
2060 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
2061 with the diary features.
2063 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
2064 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
2066 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
2069 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
2072 *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion
2073 facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main
2074 difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning
2075 they can be profiled, debugged, etc.
2078 ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping
2079 paragraphs filled as you modify them.
2082 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
2083 to be visited as images.
2085 ** Withdrawn packages
2087 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
2088 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
2090 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
2092 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
2095 * Incompatible Lisp changes
2097 There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and
2098 may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference.
2099 See the sections below for details.
2101 ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom
2102 `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties.
2103 Use `copy-sequence' and `set-text-properties'.
2105 ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code
2106 which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability)
2107 may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from
2108 these properties are active.
2110 ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search
2111 ranges may affect some code.
2113 ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
2114 buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
2115 make a difference to some code.
2117 ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which
2118 operates on the minibuffer.
2120 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
2121 cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce
2122 different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters
2123 (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results).
2124 Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate
2125 character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading
2126 multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE
2127 encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program
2128 reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte
2129 sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as
2130 a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in
2131 the buffer as multibyte characters.
2133 Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal
2134 MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only
2135 appropriate for reading truly binary files.
2137 ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and
2138 `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use
2139 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead.
2141 ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as
2144 ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of
2145 extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new
2146 dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than
2147 one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard
2148 charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes
2149 the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule
2150 encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will
2151 probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21.
2154 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
2155 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
2157 ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of
2158 function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no
2159 args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated
2160 (signal or normal termination).
2163 ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements
2164 from a list are now available without requiring the CL package.
2167 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
2168 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
2171 ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies
2172 alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font.
2174 ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum".
2177 ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually
2178 deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame
2182 ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg.
2185 ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed.
2186 If a range in a regular expression or the arg of
2187 skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends
2188 with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is
2189 C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's
2193 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
2194 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
2197 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
2198 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
2201 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
2202 with the more general `:mask' property.
2205 ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's.
2207 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
2211 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
2212 is running in batch mode. For example,
2214 (message "%s" (read t))
2216 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
2220 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
2221 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
2223 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
2224 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
2228 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
2231 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
2233 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
2234 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
2236 - Function: remq ELT LIST
2238 Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The
2239 comparison is done with `eq'.
2242 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
2244 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
2248 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
2249 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
2250 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
2253 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
2254 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
2256 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
2257 function was declared obsolete.
2260 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
2261 retained as an alias).
2263 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
2264 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
2265 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
2267 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
2269 - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF
2271 Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or
2272 omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use
2273 the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window,
2274 even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the
2275 minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t
2276 means never include the minibuffer window.
2278 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
2280 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
2282 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
2284 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
2285 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
2286 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
2287 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
2290 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
2291 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
2292 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
2293 minibuffer even if it is active.
2295 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
2296 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
2297 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
2298 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
2299 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
2300 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
2302 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
2303 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
2304 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
2305 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
2306 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
2307 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
2308 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
2310 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
2311 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
2312 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
2314 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
2315 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
2316 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
2317 Default value is nil.
2319 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
2322 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
2323 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
2324 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
2327 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument
2328 list of a primitive.
2330 ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps.
2333 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
2334 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
2335 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
2336 than replacing the local map.
2338 ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and
2339 `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been
2340 removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions'
2343 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
2346 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments,
2347 as promised long ago.
2349 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
2351 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
2353 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2354 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2355 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2356 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2358 *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default.
2360 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
2361 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
2362 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
2363 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
2365 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
2366 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
2367 when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a
2368 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
2370 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
2371 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
2372 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
2374 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
2375 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
2376 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
2377 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
2378 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
2379 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
2380 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
2383 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
2385 A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for
2386 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
2387 character set as previously.
2389 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
2390 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
2391 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
2393 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
2394 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
2395 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
2396 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
2398 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
2399 name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font.
2401 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
2402 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
2405 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
2406 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
2408 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
2409 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
2410 buffers and strings.
2412 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
2413 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
2414 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
2415 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
2416 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
2417 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
2418 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
2421 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
2422 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
2423 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
2425 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
2426 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
2427 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
2428 may differ between buffer and string text.
2430 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
2431 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
2433 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
2434 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
2435 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
2436 `composition' from STRING.
2438 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
2439 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
2441 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
2444 ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on
2445 the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text.
2447 ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff',
2448 `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been
2449 introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF,
2450 U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively.
2452 ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added. It provides
2453 limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For details, please
2454 see the documentation string of this coding system.
2456 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
2457 `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese
2458 standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
2460 ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15'
2461 have been introduced.
2464 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
2465 have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
2466 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of
2467 eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the
2468 emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the
2469 buffer/string internal representation.
2472 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
2473 that offset in the file before writing.
2475 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
2476 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
2478 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
2479 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
2480 from which the command was issued.
2482 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
2483 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
2484 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
2485 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
2488 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
2489 to `window-buffer-height'.
2491 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
2493 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
2494 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
2495 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
2497 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
2500 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument
2501 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
2503 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
2504 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
2505 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
2507 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
2508 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
2509 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
2510 is currently displayed in some window.
2512 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
2513 argument function's results.
2515 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
2516 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
2518 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
2519 header in the list of headers passed to it.
2521 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
2522 ignores differences in case and text representation.
2524 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
2525 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
2528 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
2529 nil don't display a cursor
2530 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
2531 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
2532 others display a box cursor.
2534 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
2535 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
2536 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
2537 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
2539 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
2540 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
2541 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
2542 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
2546 (string-to-syntax "()")
2549 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
2552 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
2553 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
2560 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
2565 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
2570 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
2577 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
2578 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
2581 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
2582 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
2583 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
2584 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
2587 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
2589 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
2590 for a regexp in a string.
2592 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
2593 `mouse-position-function'.
2595 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
2596 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
2598 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
2599 Keywords are now always considered constants.
2602 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
2605 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
2606 returned by function `recent-keys'.
2609 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
2610 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
2611 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
2612 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
2616 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
2617 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
2620 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
2621 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
2622 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
2623 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
2626 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
2627 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
2628 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
2629 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
2632 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
2633 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
2634 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
2637 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
2638 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
2641 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
2643 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
2644 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
2645 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
2649 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
2650 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
2651 Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the
2652 corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet).
2653 Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\').
2656 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
2657 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
2660 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
2661 instead of being optional.
2664 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
2665 modify read-only text.
2668 ** New functions and variables for locales.
2670 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
2671 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
2672 time functions like strftime. The new variables
2673 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
2674 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
2676 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
2677 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
2678 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
2679 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
2680 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
2681 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
2682 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
2685 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
2686 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
2687 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
2691 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
2692 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
2695 ** New function `propertize'
2697 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
2698 strings with text properties.
2700 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
2702 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
2703 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
2704 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
2705 specified value of that property. Example:
2707 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
2710 ** push and pop macros.
2712 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
2713 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
2714 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
2716 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
2717 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
2718 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
2720 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
2722 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
2723 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
2725 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
2726 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
2727 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
2728 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
2730 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
2731 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
2732 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
2733 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
2736 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as
2737 [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character
2738 class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period
2741 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
2742 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
2743 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
2744 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
2745 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
2747 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
2749 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
2750 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2751 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2752 [:alpha:] matches letters.
2753 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2754 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2755 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
2756 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
2757 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
2758 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
2759 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2760 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2761 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2762 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
2763 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2766 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2768 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2770 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2772 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2773 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2777 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2778 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2779 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2783 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2784 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2786 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2788 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2789 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2790 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2791 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2792 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2794 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2796 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2797 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2798 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2802 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2803 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2804 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2805 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2806 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2808 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2810 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2812 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2814 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2816 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2818 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2821 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2823 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2825 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2827 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2829 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2831 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2833 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2835 Returns the size of TABLE.
2837 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2839 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2841 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2843 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2845 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2849 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2851 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2854 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2856 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2857 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2859 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2861 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2863 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2865 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2866 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2868 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2870 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2872 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2874 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2875 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2876 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2877 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2878 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2880 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2882 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2883 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2884 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2886 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2887 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2889 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2890 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2892 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2893 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2895 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2896 'case-fold-string-hash))
2898 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2901 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2903 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2904 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2905 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2908 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2910 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2911 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2914 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2915 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2916 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2917 is too short to reach that column.
2920 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2921 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2922 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2923 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2925 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2926 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2927 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2930 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2931 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2934 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2935 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2938 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2939 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2940 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2941 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2942 temporary-file-directory instead.
2945 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2946 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2947 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2948 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2951 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2952 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2955 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2957 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2958 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2959 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2962 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2964 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2965 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2966 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2967 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2968 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2969 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2971 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2972 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2973 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2974 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2977 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2979 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2980 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2981 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2984 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2985 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2989 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2991 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2992 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2995 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2998 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
3000 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
3001 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
3004 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
3006 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
3007 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
3013 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
3014 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
3016 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
3017 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
3018 to enable sound support.
3020 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
3021 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
3022 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
3023 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
3024 sound to play, before playing the sound.
3026 The following sound properties are supported:
3030 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
3031 searched relative to `data-directory'.
3035 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
3036 may be present, but not both.
3040 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
3041 0..1. This property is optional.
3045 DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the
3046 sound. The default device is system-dependent.
3048 Other properties are ignored.
3050 An alternative interface is called as
3051 (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE).
3053 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
3056 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
3059 ** Changes to garbage collection
3061 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
3062 of live and free strings.
3064 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
3065 strings that have been consed so far.
3068 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
3072 ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes
3076 ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional
3077 argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is
3078 returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil.
3080 ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
3083 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
3086 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
3089 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
3091 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
3093 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
3094 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
3095 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
3096 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
3097 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
3100 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
3103 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
3105 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
3106 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
3107 or omitted means use the selected frame.
3110 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
3111 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
3114 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
3118 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
3122 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
3124 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
3125 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
3126 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
3127 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
3129 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
3130 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
3132 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
3133 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
3134 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
3135 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
3136 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
3137 just display it black instead.
3139 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
3142 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
3146 ** New face implementation.
3148 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
3149 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
3154 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
3156 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
3158 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
3159 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
3161 3. Font height in 1/10pt
3163 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
3165 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
3167 6. Foreground color.
3169 7. Background color.
3171 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
3173 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
3175 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
3177 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
3179 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
3182 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
3183 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
3185 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
3186 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
3187 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
3188 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
3189 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face
3190 attributes mentioned above.
3192 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
3193 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
3196 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
3197 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
3203 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
3204 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
3205 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
3206 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
3207 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
3208 results in a fully-specified face.
3211 *** Face realization.
3213 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
3214 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
3215 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
3216 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
3217 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
3218 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
3220 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
3221 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
3222 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
3223 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
3225 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
3226 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
3227 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
3228 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
3229 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
3231 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
3232 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
3233 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
3234 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
3235 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
3238 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
3239 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
3240 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
3241 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
3244 **** Clearing face caches.
3246 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
3247 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
3253 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
3254 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
3255 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
3257 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
3258 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
3259 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
3260 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
3261 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
3263 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
3264 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
3265 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
3267 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
3269 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
3270 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
3271 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
3272 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
3273 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
3274 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
3275 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
3277 Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify
3278 alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face
3281 Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify
3282 all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a
3285 Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are
3288 Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts.
3294 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
3295 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
3298 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
3299 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
3300 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
3301 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
3302 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
3305 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
3307 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
3310 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
3312 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
3314 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
3315 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
3316 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
3318 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
3319 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
3320 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
3321 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
3322 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
3323 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
3324 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
3325 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
3326 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
3327 of the face font sort order.
3329 - Function: x-font-family-list
3331 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
3332 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
3333 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
3334 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
3336 - Variable: font-list-limit
3338 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
3339 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
3340 matching font. The default is currently 100.
3343 *** Setting face attributes.
3345 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
3346 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
3347 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
3350 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
3351 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
3353 The following attributes are recognized:
3357 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
3358 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
3359 and `?' are allowed.
3363 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
3364 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
3365 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
3366 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
3370 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
3371 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
3372 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
3373 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
3377 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
3378 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
3379 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
3383 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
3384 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
3387 `:foreground', `:background'
3389 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
3393 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
3394 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
3395 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
3400 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
3401 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
3402 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
3407 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
3408 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
3409 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
3410 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
3414 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
3415 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
3416 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
3417 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
3418 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
3419 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
3420 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
3421 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
3422 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
3423 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
3424 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
3425 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
3426 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
3427 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
3428 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
3429 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
3434 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
3435 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
3439 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
3440 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
3441 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
3442 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
3443 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
3444 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
3446 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
3447 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
3451 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
3452 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
3453 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
3456 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
3457 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
3458 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
3460 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
3465 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
3466 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
3467 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
3469 *** Face attributes and X resources
3471 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
3474 Face attribute X resource class
3475 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
3476 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
3477 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
3478 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
3479 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
3480 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
3481 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
3482 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
3483 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
3484 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
3485 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
3486 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
3487 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
3488 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
3489 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
3490 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
3491 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
3492 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
3493 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
3494 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
3497 *** Text property `face'.
3499 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
3500 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
3501 specification can be
3503 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
3505 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
3506 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
3507 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
3508 for face attribute names.
3510 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
3511 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
3512 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
3515 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
3517 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
3518 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
3519 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
3520 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
3521 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
3522 used to clear the mapping table.
3524 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
3526 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
3527 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
3528 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
3529 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
3530 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
3531 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
3532 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
3533 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
3534 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
3535 modify their color-related behavior.
3537 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
3540 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
3542 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
3543 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
3544 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
3545 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
3546 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
3547 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
3548 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
3549 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
3550 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
3553 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
3555 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
3556 To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize
3557 the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the
3558 `Inviolable' option.
3560 The function minibuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
3561 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
3562 Otherwise, it returns zero.
3564 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
3566 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
3567 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
3568 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
3570 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
3571 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
3572 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
3573 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
3574 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
3575 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
3576 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
3579 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
3580 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
3581 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
3583 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
3585 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
3587 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
3589 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3590 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
3591 constrained position if that is different.
3593 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
3594 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
3595 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
3596 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
3597 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3598 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
3599 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
3600 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
3601 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
3603 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
3604 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
3605 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
3606 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
3607 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
3609 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
3610 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
3612 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
3614 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
3616 Delete the field surrounding POS.
3617 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3618 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3620 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3622 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
3623 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3624 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3625 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
3626 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
3628 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3630 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
3631 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3632 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3633 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
3634 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
3636 - Function: field-string &optional POS
3638 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
3639 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3640 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3642 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
3644 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
3645 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3646 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3651 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
3652 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
3653 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
3654 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
3656 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
3657 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
3658 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
3659 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
3662 IMAGE is an image specification.
3664 *** Image specifications
3666 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
3667 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
3668 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
3669 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
3670 described below are ignored.
3672 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
3676 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
3677 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
3678 to use for its ascent.
3680 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
3681 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
3683 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
3684 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
3685 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
3686 overlays that apply to the image.
3690 MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put
3691 as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the
3692 horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0.
3696 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
3701 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
3703 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
3704 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
3706 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
3707 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
3708 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
3709 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
3710 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
3711 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
3712 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
3713 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
3716 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
3718 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
3720 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
3721 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
3722 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
3723 of the factors' absolute values.
3725 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
3731 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
3737 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
3742 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
3743 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
3744 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
3745 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
3746 image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is
3747 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
3748 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
3751 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
3752 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
3757 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
3758 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
3759 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
3760 may be present in the image specification.
3764 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
3765 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
3766 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
3767 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
3769 *** Supported image types
3771 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
3773 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
3774 properties supported are
3778 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
3779 is the frame's foreground.
3783 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
3784 the frame's background color.
3786 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
3787 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
3788 instead of a `:file' property.
3792 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
3796 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
3802 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
3803 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
3805 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
3807 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
3810 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
3811 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
3814 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
3816 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
3817 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
3818 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
3819 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
3821 Additional image properties supported are:
3823 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
3825 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
3826 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
3829 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
3830 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
3832 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
3833 to display compressed images.
3835 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
3837 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
3838 mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for
3843 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
3844 is the frame's foreground.
3848 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
3849 the frame's background color.
3851 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
3853 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3854 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
3857 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
3859 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
3860 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3863 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3865 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3866 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3868 Additional image properties supported are:
3872 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3873 multi-image GIF file. An error is signaled if INDEX is too large.
3875 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3876 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3877 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3880 (defun show-anim (file max)
3881 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3882 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3884 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3887 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3890 (goto-char (point-min))
3891 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3892 (insert-image img "x"))
3893 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3895 **** PNG, image type `png'
3897 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3898 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3901 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3903 Additional image properties supported are:
3907 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3908 integer. This is a required property.
3912 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3913 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3917 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3918 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3919 files. This is an required property.
3921 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3926 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3927 which are supported in the current configuration.
3929 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3930 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3931 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3932 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3933 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3935 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3937 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3938 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3939 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3940 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3941 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3947 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3950 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3951 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3952 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3953 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3954 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3955 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3956 of the display margins.
3958 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3959 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3960 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3961 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3967 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3968 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3969 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3970 that have a `help-echo' property.
3972 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3973 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3974 the window in which the help was found.
3976 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3977 `help-echo' text property was found.
3979 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3980 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3982 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3983 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3986 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3987 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3989 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3990 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3991 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3992 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3993 used as help string.
3995 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3996 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3997 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
4000 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
4002 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
4003 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
4005 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
4006 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
4007 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
4008 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
4011 (global-set-key [A-down]
4014 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4015 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
4016 (global-set-key [A-up]
4019 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4020 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
4023 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
4025 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
4026 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
4027 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
4028 is called with one argument, POS.
4030 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
4031 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
4032 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
4033 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
4034 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
4037 ** Tool bar support.
4039 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
4040 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
4041 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
4042 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
4043 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
4044 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
4046 *** Tool bar item definitions
4048 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
4049 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
4050 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
4052 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
4053 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
4054 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
4055 property (see below).
4057 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
4058 binding are currently ignored.
4060 The following properties are recognized:
4064 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
4069 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
4073 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
4074 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
4075 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
4077 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
4079 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
4080 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
4084 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
4085 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
4086 meaning of each of the four elements:
4088 Index Use when item is
4089 ----------------------------------------
4090 0 enabled and selected
4091 1 enabled and deselected
4092 2 disabled and selected
4093 3 disabled and deselected
4095 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
4096 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
4098 `:help HELP-STRING'.
4100 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
4101 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
4103 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
4104 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
4105 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
4108 The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar
4109 dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set
4110 buffer-locally to override the global map.
4112 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
4114 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
4115 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
4116 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
4118 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
4119 raised when the mouse moves over them.
4121 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
4122 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
4123 pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and
4124 vertical margins . Default is 1.
4126 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
4127 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
4129 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
4131 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
4134 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
4135 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
4136 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
4138 is the original tool bar item definition, then
4140 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
4142 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
4145 ** Mode line changes.
4148 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
4150 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
4151 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
4152 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
4154 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
4155 a `local-map' text property.
4157 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
4158 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
4160 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
4161 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
4162 `local-map' property.
4164 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
4165 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
4168 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
4169 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
4172 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
4173 variable mode-line-format to nil.
4176 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
4178 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
4179 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
4180 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
4181 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
4184 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
4187 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
4188 position in the header-line.
4191 ** Text property `display'
4193 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
4194 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
4195 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
4196 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
4197 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
4199 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
4201 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
4202 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
4204 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
4205 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
4206 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
4207 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
4208 simpler form STRING as property value.
4210 *** Variable width and height spaces
4212 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
4213 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
4214 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
4215 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
4216 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
4217 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
4218 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
4220 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
4221 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
4222 properties described below.
4224 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
4225 characters having the `display' property.
4229 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
4230 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
4232 - :relative-width FACTOR
4234 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
4235 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
4236 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
4237 width of that character by FACTOR.
4241 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
4242 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
4244 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
4248 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
4251 - :relative-height FACTOR
4253 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
4254 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
4258 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
4259 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
4260 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
4263 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
4267 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
4268 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
4269 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
4270 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
4271 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
4272 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
4273 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
4274 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
4275 as display specification.
4277 *** Other display properties
4279 - (space-width FACTOR)
4281 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
4282 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
4287 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
4289 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
4290 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
4291 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
4292 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
4293 a font is available counts as a step.
4295 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
4296 as tall as the frame's default font.
4298 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
4299 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
4301 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
4302 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
4306 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
4307 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
4308 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
4309 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
4310 `height' subproperty.
4312 *** Conditional display properties
4314 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
4315 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
4316 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
4317 During evaluation, point is temporarily set to the end position of
4318 the text having the `display' property.
4320 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
4324 ** New menu separator types.
4326 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
4327 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
4328 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
4329 to specify other menu separator types.
4331 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
4333 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
4336 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
4338 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
4340 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
4342 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
4344 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
4346 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
4348 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
4350 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
4352 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
4354 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form
4355 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
4357 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
4359 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
4361 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
4363 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
4365 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
4367 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
4369 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
4371 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
4373 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
4375 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
4377 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
4379 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
4381 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
4383 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
4385 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
4386 the corresponding single-line separators.
4389 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
4391 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
4392 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
4393 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
4394 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
4395 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
4396 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
4397 default foreground is black.
4399 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
4400 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
4401 `ScrollBarBackground').
4403 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
4404 settings for scroll bar colors.
4407 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
4408 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
4411 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
4412 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
4413 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
4414 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
4415 the original window start.
4418 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
4419 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
4420 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
4423 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
4425 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
4426 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
4427 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
4428 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
4430 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
4431 fixed-width and fixed-height.
4433 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
4435 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
4436 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
4437 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
4438 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
4439 temporarily to nil, for example
4441 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
4442 (enlarge-window 10))
4444 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
4445 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
4447 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
4448 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
4449 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
4450 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
4451 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
4452 support a vertical-bar cursor).
4457 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
4459 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
4462 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
4464 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
4466 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
4467 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
4468 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
4469 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
4470 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
4472 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
4476 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
4478 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
4482 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
4484 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
4485 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
4487 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
4489 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
4491 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
4492 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
4493 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
4495 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
4496 is the one that is used.
4498 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
4499 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
4500 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
4501 separate from the command's regular output.
4502 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
4503 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
4504 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
4507 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
4508 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
4509 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
4510 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
4512 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
4513 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
4514 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
4515 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
4517 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
4518 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
4519 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
4520 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
4522 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
4523 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
4524 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
4525 they never ignore case.
4527 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
4528 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
4529 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
4530 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
4531 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
4532 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
4533 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
4535 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
4536 the same format that was used in the file before.
4538 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
4539 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
4541 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
4542 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
4543 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
4545 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
4546 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
4547 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
4548 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
4549 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
4550 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
4551 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
4553 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
4554 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
4555 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
4556 format. You can now customize these variables.
4558 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
4559 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
4560 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
4561 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
4563 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
4564 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
4565 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
4567 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
4568 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
4569 doesn't have any effect.
4571 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
4574 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
4575 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
4576 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
4578 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
4579 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
4580 `auto-show-mode' command.
4582 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
4583 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
4584 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
4585 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
4586 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
4588 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
4589 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
4591 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
4592 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
4593 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
4595 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
4596 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
4597 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
4598 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
4600 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
4602 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
4603 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
4604 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
4605 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
4606 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
4608 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
4609 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
4611 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
4612 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
4613 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
4614 `?' on other systems.
4616 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
4617 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
4620 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
4621 current codepage when it starts.
4625 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
4626 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
4627 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
4628 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
4629 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
4630 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
4634 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
4635 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
4637 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
4638 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
4639 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
4640 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
4641 buffer-file-coding-system.
4643 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
4644 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
4647 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
4648 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
4649 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
4650 list of possible coding systems.
4654 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
4655 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
4656 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
4657 docstring for details.
4659 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
4660 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
4661 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
4662 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
4663 lineup functions use this feature currently.
4665 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
4666 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
4668 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
4669 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
4671 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
4672 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
4673 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
4674 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
4677 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
4678 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
4680 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
4681 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
4682 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
4683 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
4685 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
4686 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
4687 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
4688 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
4689 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
4691 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
4693 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
4695 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
4696 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
4698 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
4700 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
4701 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
4702 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
4703 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
4704 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
4708 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
4709 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
4710 Gnus manual for the full story.
4712 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
4713 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
4714 group, which is created automatically.
4716 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
4719 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
4721 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
4722 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
4724 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
4727 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
4729 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
4730 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
4732 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
4734 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
4735 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
4737 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
4738 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
4740 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
4741 control over simplification.
4743 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
4745 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
4748 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
4750 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
4752 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
4753 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
4754 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
4756 *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
4757 `a' forces normal posting method.
4759 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
4762 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
4765 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
4766 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
4768 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
4771 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
4773 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
4775 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
4776 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
4778 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
4779 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
4781 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
4783 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
4786 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
4787 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
4789 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
4790 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
4792 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
4794 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
4796 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
4798 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
4800 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
4801 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
4802 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
4804 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
4805 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
4806 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
4807 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
4808 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
4810 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
4811 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
4812 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
4813 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
4815 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
4816 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
4817 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
4820 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4822 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
4823 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
4825 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
4826 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
4827 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
4828 removed from the label.
4830 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
4831 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
4833 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
4834 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
4836 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
4837 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
4840 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
4842 ** New/deleted modes and packages
4844 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
4845 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
4847 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
4848 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
4849 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
4851 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
4852 changes with a special face.
4854 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
4855 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
4856 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
4858 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
4860 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
4861 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
4862 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
4863 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
4864 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
4866 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
4867 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
4868 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
4870 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
4871 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
4872 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
4873 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
4874 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
4875 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
4876 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
4877 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
4878 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
4880 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
4881 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
4882 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
4883 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
4884 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
4887 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
4888 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
4889 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
4890 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4891 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4892 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4894 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4895 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4896 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4897 was not documented clearly before.
4899 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4900 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4902 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4904 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4905 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4906 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4907 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4909 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4910 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4911 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4913 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4915 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4916 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4918 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4919 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4922 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4923 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4924 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4925 file names and attributes are returned.
4927 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4928 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4929 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes.
4930 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4933 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4934 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4936 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4938 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4939 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4940 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4943 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4944 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4947 The new function process-running-child-p
4948 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4949 terminal to its own child process.
4951 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4952 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4953 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4954 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4956 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4957 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4959 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4960 :included is an alias for :visible.
4962 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4963 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4964 to move or copy menu entries.
4966 ** Multibyte editing changes
4968 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4969 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4970 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4971 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4972 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4973 (setq char (sref str idx)
4974 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4975 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4977 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4978 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4979 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4981 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4982 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4983 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4985 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited
4987 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4988 across the boundary.
4990 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4991 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4992 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4993 contains 8-bit characters.
4994 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4995 contains invalid characters.
4997 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4998 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4999 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
5000 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
5003 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
5004 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
5005 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
5006 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
5008 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
5009 compose Thai characters in a string.
5011 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
5012 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
5013 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
5014 menus should always use the third argument.
5016 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
5017 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
5018 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
5019 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
5021 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
5022 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
5023 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
5024 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
5026 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
5027 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
5028 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
5031 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
5033 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
5034 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
5035 requested feature cannot be loaded.
5037 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
5038 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
5039 means to clear out that attribute.
5041 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
5042 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
5044 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
5045 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
5046 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
5047 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
5049 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
5050 the gap of the current buffer.
5052 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
5053 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
5056 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
5057 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
5058 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
5059 it back in after any modifications have been made.
5061 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
5063 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
5064 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
5065 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
5066 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
5067 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
5069 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
5070 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
5071 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
5072 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
5073 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
5075 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
5076 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
5077 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
5079 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
5080 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
5081 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
5082 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
5083 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
5086 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
5087 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
5088 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
5089 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
5091 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
5093 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
5094 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
5095 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
5096 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
5098 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
5099 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
5100 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
5101 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
5102 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
5103 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
5104 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
5107 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
5110 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
5111 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
5112 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
5113 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
5114 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
5116 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
5117 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
5118 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
5119 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
5121 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
5122 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
5123 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
5124 something that most users not do.
5126 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
5127 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
5128 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
5131 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
5134 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
5135 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
5136 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
5137 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
5140 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
5141 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
5142 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
5143 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
5144 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
5147 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
5148 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
5149 to be confused by TeX commands.
5151 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
5152 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
5153 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
5154 of various alternative replacements and actions.
5156 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
5157 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
5158 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
5159 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
5160 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
5162 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
5163 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
5165 ** Changes in input method usage.
5167 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
5168 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
5171 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
5173 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
5174 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
5176 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
5177 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
5179 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
5181 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
5183 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
5184 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
5186 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
5187 given in the following case:
5188 o When you are using a complex input method.
5189 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
5191 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
5192 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
5193 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
5194 setting it to t is helpful.
5196 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
5198 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
5200 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
5201 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
5202 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
5203 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
5206 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
5207 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
5208 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
5211 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
5213 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
5215 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
5216 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
5218 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
5219 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
5220 its owner and group.
5222 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
5223 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
5225 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
5226 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
5228 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
5229 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
5230 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
5231 by the left edge of the rectangle.
5233 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
5234 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
5235 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
5236 for writing keyboard macros.
5238 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
5239 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
5240 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
5241 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
5242 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
5245 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
5247 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
5248 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
5251 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
5252 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
5253 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
5254 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
5256 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
5257 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
5258 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
5260 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
5261 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
5262 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
5263 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
5265 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
5266 failure if the command produces no output.
5268 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
5269 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
5272 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
5273 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
5274 function and variable names.
5276 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
5277 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
5278 file-coding-system-alist.
5280 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
5281 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
5282 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
5283 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
5284 according to the current fontset.
5286 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
5288 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
5289 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
5290 nonascii-insert-offset.
5292 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
5293 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
5294 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
5295 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
5297 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
5298 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
5300 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
5301 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
5303 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
5304 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
5307 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
5308 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
5310 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
5311 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
5312 all variables that have documentation.
5314 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
5315 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
5316 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
5317 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
5318 it should show; the default is 20.
5320 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
5321 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
5324 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
5325 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
5326 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
5327 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
5328 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
5329 Newly added options are included as well.
5331 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
5332 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
5333 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
5335 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
5338 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
5339 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
5341 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
5342 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
5345 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
5346 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
5349 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
5350 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
5351 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
5352 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
5355 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
5357 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
5358 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
5359 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
5361 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
5362 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
5363 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
5368 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
5369 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
5371 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
5372 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
5374 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
5375 read and post multi-lingual articles.
5377 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
5378 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
5379 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
5380 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
5381 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
5382 made invisible again.
5384 ** Mail reading and sending changes
5386 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
5387 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
5388 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
5391 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
5392 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
5393 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
5394 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
5395 rmail-default-body-file.
5397 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
5398 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
5399 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
5401 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
5402 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
5403 is evaluated to insert the signature.
5405 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
5406 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
5407 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
5408 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
5409 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
5410 especially interested in trying feedmail.
5412 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
5413 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
5414 provided by feedmail are:
5416 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
5417 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
5418 there is also a queue for draft messages
5420 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
5421 be prompted for confirmation
5423 **** does smart filling of address headers
5425 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
5426 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
5427 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
5429 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
5430 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
5431 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
5432 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
5436 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
5437 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
5439 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
5440 run Dired on the directory name at point.
5442 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
5443 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
5444 for a specified regexp.
5448 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
5451 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
5452 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
5455 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
5456 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
5457 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
5458 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
5460 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
5461 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
5462 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
5463 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
5464 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
5466 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
5467 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
5468 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
5469 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
5470 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
5472 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
5473 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
5474 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
5475 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
5477 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
5478 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
5479 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
5481 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
5482 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
5483 session to resolve them.
5485 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
5486 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
5487 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
5490 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
5491 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
5492 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
5493 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
5494 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
5495 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
5498 ** Changes in Font Lock
5500 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
5501 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
5502 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
5503 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
5504 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
5506 ** Frame name display changes
5508 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
5509 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
5510 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
5511 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
5513 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
5514 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
5517 ** Comint (subshell) changes
5519 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
5520 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
5521 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
5523 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
5525 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
5526 that is, the line after the last line you got.
5527 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
5529 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
5530 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
5533 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
5534 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
5535 previously sent input.
5537 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
5538 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
5539 as the search string.
5541 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
5542 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
5546 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
5547 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
5548 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
5551 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
5552 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
5553 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
5554 style is still the default however.
5556 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
5558 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
5559 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
5560 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
5562 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
5563 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
5565 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
5566 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
5568 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
5569 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
5571 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
5572 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
5574 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
5575 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
5576 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
5577 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
5579 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
5581 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
5582 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
5583 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
5585 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
5586 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
5587 expanding dynamically.
5589 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
5590 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
5592 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
5593 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
5594 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
5595 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
5597 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
5599 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5601 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
5602 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
5603 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
5604 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
5605 against the first word in the title.
5607 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
5608 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
5609 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
5610 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
5611 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
5612 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
5614 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
5615 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
5616 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
5617 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
5619 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
5621 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
5622 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
5623 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
5624 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
5625 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
5626 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
5628 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
5629 Editing group once the package is loaded.
5631 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
5632 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
5633 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior.
5635 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
5636 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
5640 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
5641 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
5642 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
5644 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
5645 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
5646 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
5647 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
5650 o URLs are automatically skipped
5651 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
5653 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
5655 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5657 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
5658 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
5659 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
5660 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
5662 *** New recursive parser.
5664 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
5665 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
5666 recursive parser scans the individual files.
5668 *** Parsing only part of a document.
5670 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
5671 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
5672 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
5674 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
5676 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
5678 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
5680 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
5682 *** Using multiple selection buffers
5684 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
5685 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
5687 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
5689 *** References to external documents.
5691 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
5692 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
5693 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
5694 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
5695 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
5696 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
5697 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
5699 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
5701 The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
5702 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
5704 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
5705 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
5707 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
5709 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
5710 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
5712 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
5714 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
5715 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
5716 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
5717 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
5718 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
5719 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
5722 *** Support for the varioref package
5724 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
5728 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
5729 and citations are created. These hooks are
5730 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
5731 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
5733 *** Citations outside LaTeX
5735 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
5736 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
5738 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
5740 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
5741 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
5744 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
5746 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
5747 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
5748 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
5749 directories that contain the same file name.
5751 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
5752 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
5753 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
5754 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
5755 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
5756 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
5757 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
5760 ** New modes and packages
5762 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
5763 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
5764 it, but some do not.
5766 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
5769 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
5770 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
5773 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
5775 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
5776 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
5777 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
5778 established system of notation similar to Chess.
5780 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
5781 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
5782 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
5784 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
5785 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
5786 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
5787 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
5788 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
5791 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
5792 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
5794 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
5795 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
5796 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
5797 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
5799 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
5801 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
5802 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
5803 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
5804 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
5805 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
5806 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
5807 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
5808 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
5809 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
5810 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
5811 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
5813 Platform-specific modes:
5815 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
5816 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
5817 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
5818 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
5819 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
5820 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
5821 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
5822 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
5823 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
5825 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
5827 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
5828 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
5829 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
5830 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
5832 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
5833 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
5834 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
5836 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
5837 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
5838 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
5839 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
5841 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
5842 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
5843 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
5846 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
5847 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
5848 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
5849 current input method for reading this one event.
5851 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
5852 now control whether to output certain characters as
5853 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
5854 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
5855 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
5856 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
5858 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
5860 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
5861 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
5863 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
5864 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
5865 always increases point by 1.
5867 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
5868 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
5870 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
5872 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
5873 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
5874 default value changed. For example,
5876 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
5881 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
5884 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
5885 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
5886 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
5887 `:version' in the top level group.
5889 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5891 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5892 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5894 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5895 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5896 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5899 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5900 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5903 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5904 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5905 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5907 ** Frame-local variables.
5909 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5910 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5911 local bindings for that variable.
5913 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5914 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5915 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5918 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5919 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5920 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5921 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5923 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5924 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5925 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5926 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5928 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5929 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5930 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5931 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5932 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5934 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5935 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5936 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5937 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5939 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5940 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5942 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5943 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5944 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5946 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5947 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5948 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5949 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5951 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5952 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5955 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5956 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5957 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5958 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5959 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5961 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5962 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5963 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5964 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5966 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5967 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5968 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5969 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5970 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5972 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5973 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5974 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5975 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5977 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5978 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5979 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5981 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5982 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5983 was directed to display this buffer.
5985 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5986 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5987 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5988 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5989 set-window-configuration.
5991 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5992 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5993 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5994 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5996 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5997 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5998 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
6000 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
6001 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
6002 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
6004 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
6005 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
6007 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
6008 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
6010 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
6011 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
6012 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
6014 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
6015 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
6016 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
6017 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
6021 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
6022 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
6025 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
6026 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
6027 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
6028 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
6029 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
6031 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
6033 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
6034 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
6035 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
6036 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
6039 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
6040 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
6041 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
6042 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
6043 The supported properties include
6045 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6047 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6048 item should appear in the menu.
6050 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
6051 which will be REAL-BINDING.
6052 It should return a binding to use instead.
6054 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
6055 binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
6056 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
6057 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
6058 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
6061 This means that the command normally has no
6062 keyboard equivalent.
6063 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
6064 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
6065 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
6066 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
6067 value says whether this button is currently selected.
6069 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
6070 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
6072 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
6076 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
6077 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
6078 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
6079 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
6081 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
6083 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6084 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
6085 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
6086 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
6087 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
6088 forward, away from the user.
6090 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6092 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
6093 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
6094 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
6095 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
6096 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
6098 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
6100 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6101 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
6102 that were dragged and dropped.
6104 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6106 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
6108 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
6109 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
6110 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
6112 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
6113 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
6114 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
6116 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
6117 in Emacs 19 and before.
6119 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
6120 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
6122 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
6123 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
6124 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
6125 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
6127 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
6128 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
6129 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
6130 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
6131 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
6133 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
6134 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
6135 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
6136 consistent with the new representation.
6138 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
6139 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
6140 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
6141 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6143 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
6144 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
6145 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
6147 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
6148 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
6149 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6151 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
6152 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
6153 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
6155 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6156 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
6158 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6159 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
6161 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
6162 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
6163 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
6164 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
6166 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
6167 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
6169 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
6170 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
6171 buffer or string being searched.
6173 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
6174 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
6175 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
6176 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
6177 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
6178 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
6179 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
6181 *** Structure of coding system changed.
6183 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
6184 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
6185 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
6186 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
6187 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
6188 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
6189 define-coding-system-alias.
6191 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
6192 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
6193 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
6194 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
6195 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
6196 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
6197 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
6200 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
6201 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
6202 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
6203 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
6205 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
6206 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
6207 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
6208 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
6210 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
6211 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
6212 This function requires a user interaction.
6214 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
6215 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
6216 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
6217 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
6218 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
6219 select-safe-coding-system.
6221 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
6222 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
6223 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
6226 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
6227 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
6228 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
6230 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
6231 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
6232 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
6233 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
6235 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
6236 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
6237 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
6240 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
6241 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
6243 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
6244 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
6245 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
6246 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
6247 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
6248 range of characters.
6250 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
6251 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
6253 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
6254 in the current buffer at position POS.
6256 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
6257 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
6258 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
6259 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
6260 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
6261 binding input-method-function to nil.
6263 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
6264 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
6265 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
6266 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
6267 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
6269 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
6270 subsequent events of a key sequence.
6272 *** You can customize any language environment by using
6273 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
6275 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
6276 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
6277 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
6278 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
6279 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
6281 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
6283 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
6284 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
6285 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
6288 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
6289 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
6291 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
6292 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
6293 in your .emacs file.)
6295 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
6296 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
6298 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
6299 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
6301 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
6302 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
6305 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
6306 delete the character before point, as usual.
6308 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
6309 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
6310 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
6312 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
6313 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
6314 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
6315 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
6316 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
6319 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
6320 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
6321 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
6322 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
6323 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
6325 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
6326 and is an alias for it.
6328 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
6329 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
6331 ** Scrolling changes
6333 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
6334 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
6336 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
6337 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
6340 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
6341 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
6342 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
6343 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
6345 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
6346 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
6347 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
6348 recenters the window.
6350 ** International character set support (MULE)
6352 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
6353 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
6354 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
6355 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
6356 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
6357 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
6359 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
6360 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
6361 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
6362 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
6363 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
6365 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
6366 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
6367 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
6368 language, to make it possible to type them.
6370 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
6371 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
6373 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
6374 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
6376 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
6378 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
6380 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
6381 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
6382 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
6383 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
6384 characters for their work until they want to change.
6388 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
6389 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
6390 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
6391 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
6392 support several input methods.
6394 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
6395 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
6398 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
6399 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
6400 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
6401 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
6402 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
6405 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
6406 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
6407 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
6408 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
6409 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
6411 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
6412 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
6413 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
6414 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
6416 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
6417 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
6418 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
6419 the first guess is wrong.
6421 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
6422 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
6424 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
6425 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
6426 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
6427 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
6429 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
6430 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
6431 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
6432 translate automatically to and from either one.
6434 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
6436 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
6437 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
6438 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
6441 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
6442 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
6443 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
6444 multibyte characters in that buffer.
6446 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
6447 character conversion as well.
6449 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
6451 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
6452 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
6453 requires using many fonts.
6455 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
6456 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
6458 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
6459 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
6460 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
6461 you would use a font.
6463 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
6464 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
6465 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
6467 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
6468 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
6469 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
6470 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
6471 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
6473 *** Defining fontsets.
6475 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
6476 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
6477 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
6479 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
6480 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
6481 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
6482 standard fontset are created automatically.
6484 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
6485 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
6486 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
6487 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
6488 name is `fontset-startup'.
6490 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
6491 The resource value should have this form:
6492 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
6493 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
6494 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
6495 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
6496 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
6497 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
6498 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
6499 CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME
6500 should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
6502 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
6503 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
6504 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
6506 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
6507 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
6509 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
6510 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
6511 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
6512 Here is the substitution rule:
6513 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
6514 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
6515 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
6516 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
6517 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
6519 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
6520 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
6521 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
6523 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
6524 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
6525 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
6526 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
6529 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
6530 defaults for a particular choice of language.
6532 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
6533 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
6534 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
6535 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
6536 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
6537 system for new files that you create.
6539 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
6540 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
6541 whole Emacs session.
6543 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
6544 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
6545 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
6547 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
6548 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
6549 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
6550 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
6551 coding systems that Emacs supports.
6553 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
6554 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
6555 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
6556 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
6557 is used for *the immediately following command*.
6559 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
6560 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
6562 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
6563 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
6565 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
6566 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
6568 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
6569 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
6570 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
6571 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
6574 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
6575 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
6576 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
6577 translated into that character code.
6579 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
6580 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
6582 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
6584 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
6585 the coding system for keyboard input.
6587 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
6588 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
6589 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
6591 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
6593 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
6594 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
6595 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
6596 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
6597 designed to work with terminals.
6599 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
6600 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
6601 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
6602 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
6603 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
6604 in the corresponding buffer.
6606 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
6608 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
6609 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
6610 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
6612 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
6613 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
6614 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
6617 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
6618 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
6620 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
6621 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
6622 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
6623 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
6625 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
6626 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
6627 related information.
6629 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
6630 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
6633 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
6634 information about the support for a particular language.
6635 You specify the language as an argument.
6637 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
6638 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
6641 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
6642 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
6643 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
6644 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
6646 A alternativnyj (Russian)
6648 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
6649 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
6650 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
6651 E euc-japan (Japanese)
6652 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
6653 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
6654 K euc-korea (Korean)
6657 S shift_jis (Japanese)
6660 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
6661 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
6662 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
6666 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
6667 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
6668 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
6669 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
6671 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
6672 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
6674 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
6675 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
6676 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
6677 Rmail files themselves.
6679 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
6680 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
6682 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
6685 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
6686 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
6687 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
6688 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
6689 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
6691 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
6692 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
6693 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
6696 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
6697 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
6698 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
6699 without any conversion.
6701 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
6702 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
6703 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
6704 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
6706 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
6707 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
6709 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
6710 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
6712 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
6713 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
6715 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
6716 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
6717 in the buffer before point.
6719 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
6720 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
6723 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
6724 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
6726 ** File locking works with NFS now.
6728 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
6729 in the same directory as FILENAME.
6731 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
6732 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
6733 can become a bottleneck.
6735 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
6736 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
6737 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
6738 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
6739 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
6740 so useful that the change is worth while.
6742 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
6743 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
6744 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
6745 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
6747 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
6748 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
6751 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
6752 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
6753 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
6755 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
6756 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
6757 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
6759 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
6760 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
6761 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
6763 ** Changes in View mode.
6765 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
6766 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
6768 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
6769 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
6771 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
6774 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
6775 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
6777 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
6778 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
6779 not just the selected window.
6781 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
6782 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
6783 turns View mode on or off.
6785 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
6786 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
6787 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
6789 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
6790 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
6792 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
6793 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
6794 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
6795 which version to compare with.
6797 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
6798 blocks if a match is inside the block.
6800 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
6801 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
6802 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
6803 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
6805 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
6806 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
6807 blocks, all of them or none.
6809 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
6810 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
6813 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
6814 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
6815 However, the mode will not be changed if
6816 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
6817 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
6818 not suitable for ordinary files, or
6819 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
6821 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
6823 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
6824 these commands do not change the major mode.
6826 ** M-x occur changes.
6828 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
6829 it performs a case-sensitive search.
6831 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
6832 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
6833 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
6835 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
6836 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
6837 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
6838 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
6839 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
6841 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
6842 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
6843 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
6844 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
6846 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6847 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
6848 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
6850 ** Outline mode changes.
6852 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
6854 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
6856 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
6857 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
6858 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
6861 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
6862 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
6865 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
6866 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
6868 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
6870 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6871 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
6872 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
6873 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
6875 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
6876 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
6877 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
6879 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
6880 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
6883 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
6884 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
6885 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
6886 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
6888 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
6889 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
6890 can be. The default value is 30.
6892 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6894 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6895 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6896 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6897 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6898 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6901 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6902 compose-mail-other-frame.
6904 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6905 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6906 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6907 buffer that shows the original message.
6909 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6910 with separator lines around the contents.
6912 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6913 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6914 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6915 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6917 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6919 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6920 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6921 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6922 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6924 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6925 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6928 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6929 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6932 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6933 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6934 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6935 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6937 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6938 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6939 be taken to be magic.
6941 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6942 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6943 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6945 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6946 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6948 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6949 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6951 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6953 new key dired.el binding old key
6954 ------- ---------------- -------
6955 * c dired-change-marks c
6957 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6958 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6959 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6961 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6962 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6963 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6964 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6965 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6966 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6970 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6971 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6972 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6973 each time you run it.
6975 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6976 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6978 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6979 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6980 means to move in the opposite direction.
6982 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6983 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6985 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6986 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6987 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6988 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6993 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6995 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6998 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6999 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
7001 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
7004 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
7006 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
7008 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
7010 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
7011 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
7012 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
7014 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
7016 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
7018 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
7019 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
7021 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
7022 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
7023 used to pick articles.
7025 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
7026 another have been added.
7028 `M-x gnus-change-server'
7030 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
7031 generating lines in buffers.
7033 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
7036 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
7038 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
7040 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
7042 *** Scores can be decayed.
7044 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
7046 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
7047 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
7049 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
7052 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
7054 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
7055 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
7057 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
7059 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
7060 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
7062 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
7063 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
7065 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
7068 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
7069 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
7071 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
7073 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
7075 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
7077 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
7079 Use the `Y c' command.
7081 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
7083 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
7085 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
7087 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
7088 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
7090 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
7092 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
7094 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
7095 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
7097 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
7099 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
7100 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
7101 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
7102 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
7105 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
7106 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
7107 particular news group. This can be done by:
7109 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
7111 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
7112 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
7113 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
7114 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
7115 for reading and posting).
7117 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
7118 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
7119 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
7120 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
7123 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
7124 default. Here are some of these default settings:
7126 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
7127 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
7128 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
7129 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
7130 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
7132 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
7133 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
7137 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
7138 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
7139 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
7140 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
7141 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
7144 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
7145 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
7146 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
7147 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
7148 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
7149 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
7151 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
7152 of the current buffer.
7154 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
7155 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
7156 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
7158 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
7159 style that the Python developers like.
7161 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
7162 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
7163 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
7167 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
7168 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
7169 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
7171 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
7172 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
7175 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
7176 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
7178 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
7179 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
7180 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
7181 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
7183 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
7184 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
7186 ** Calendar changes.
7188 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
7189 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
7190 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
7194 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
7196 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
7198 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
7199 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
7200 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
7201 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
7202 It defaults to `letter'.
7203 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
7205 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
7206 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
7207 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
7209 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
7210 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
7213 *** Horizontal layout
7215 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
7216 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
7217 All are measured in points.
7221 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
7222 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
7223 All are measured in points.
7227 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
7228 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
7229 margin above the text.
7231 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
7232 framing box is printed around the header.
7234 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
7235 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
7237 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
7238 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
7239 `ps-header-font-size'.
7243 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
7244 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
7245 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
7246 elements to this alist.
7248 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
7249 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
7251 ** hideshow changes.
7253 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
7256 *** Support for java-mode added.
7258 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
7259 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
7261 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at
7262 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
7263 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
7265 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
7266 robust and a lot faster.
7268 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
7270 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
7271 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
7272 documentation for more details.
7274 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
7276 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
7277 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
7278 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
7279 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
7280 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
7282 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
7283 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
7284 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
7285 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
7291 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
7292 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
7293 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
7294 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
7295 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
7296 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
7298 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
7300 *** Maximum decoration
7302 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
7303 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
7304 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
7305 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
7306 to get the old behavior.
7310 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
7312 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
7313 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
7315 *** Configurable support
7317 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
7318 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
7319 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
7320 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
7321 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
7322 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
7323 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
7325 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
7326 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
7327 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
7329 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
7331 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
7332 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
7335 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
7337 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
7343 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
7344 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
7345 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
7346 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
7348 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
7350 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
7351 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
7352 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
7354 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
7356 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
7357 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
7358 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
7359 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
7360 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
7361 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
7362 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
7364 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
7365 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
7366 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
7367 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
7368 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
7369 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
7371 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
7373 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
7374 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
7375 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
7376 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
7378 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
7381 ** Ada mode changes.
7383 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
7384 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
7385 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
7386 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
7389 *** There are two new commands:
7390 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
7391 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
7393 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
7394 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
7395 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
7397 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
7398 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
7399 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
7401 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
7402 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
7403 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
7404 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
7406 ** Scheme mode changes.
7408 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
7409 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
7410 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
7411 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
7414 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
7415 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
7416 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
7417 variables as buffer-local variables.
7419 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
7422 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
7424 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
7425 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
7426 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
7427 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
7429 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
7430 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
7433 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
7434 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
7435 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
7436 option takes precedence.
7438 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
7439 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
7440 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
7442 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
7443 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
7446 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
7447 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
7449 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
7450 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
7453 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
7454 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
7455 these register values no longer become completely useless.
7456 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
7457 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
7458 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
7460 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
7461 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
7462 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
7463 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
7465 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
7466 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
7467 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
7468 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
7469 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
7471 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
7472 since it applies only to the current frame.
7474 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
7475 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
7476 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
7478 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
7479 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
7480 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
7481 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
7482 instead of just the file you are editing.
7486 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
7487 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
7488 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
7489 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
7490 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
7493 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
7494 knows which kind of label is needed.
7496 C-c ) reftex-reference
7497 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
7498 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
7500 C-c [ reftex-citation
7501 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
7502 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
7504 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
7505 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
7508 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
7509 can quickly jump to every section.
7511 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
7512 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
7513 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
7514 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
7515 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
7517 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7519 *** Info documentation is now available.
7521 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
7522 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
7524 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
7525 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
7527 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
7528 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
7530 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
7531 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
7532 appropriate functions.
7534 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
7535 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
7537 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
7540 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
7541 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
7543 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
7546 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
7547 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
7548 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
7550 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
7551 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
7552 prefixed with `ALT'.
7554 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
7555 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
7556 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
7559 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
7560 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
7561 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
7563 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
7564 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
7566 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
7567 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
7568 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
7570 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
7572 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
7574 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
7577 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
7578 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
7581 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
7584 *** Added support for imenu.
7586 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
7587 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
7588 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
7589 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
7591 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
7592 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
7594 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
7596 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
7598 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
7599 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
7600 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
7603 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
7604 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
7606 ** browse-url changes
7608 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
7609 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
7610 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
7611 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
7612 customization variables.
7614 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
7616 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
7617 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
7618 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
7622 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
7623 pops up the Info file for this command.
7625 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
7626 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
7627 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
7630 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
7631 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
7632 files in the same directory.
7634 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
7635 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
7636 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
7640 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
7641 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
7643 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
7644 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
7645 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
7646 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
7647 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
7648 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
7649 color when Viper is in insert state.
7650 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
7651 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
7652 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
7656 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
7657 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
7658 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
7659 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
7660 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
7662 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
7664 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
7665 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
7667 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
7668 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
7669 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
7671 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
7672 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
7673 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
7674 methods and protocols.
7676 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
7677 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
7678 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
7681 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
7682 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
7683 at least M times and as many as N times.
7685 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
7686 in files has changed slightly.
7688 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
7689 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
7690 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
7691 with old time-stamp-format values.
7693 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
7694 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
7695 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
7698 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
7699 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
7700 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
7701 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
7702 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
7703 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
7705 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
7706 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
7707 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
7709 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
7710 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
7711 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
7712 recommended now will continue to work then.
7714 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
7717 ** There are some additional major modes:
7719 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
7720 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
7721 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
7723 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
7724 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
7727 ** New Lisp packages include:
7729 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
7731 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
7732 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
7734 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
7736 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
7739 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
7740 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
7743 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
7744 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
7745 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
7746 strings or comments.
7748 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
7749 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
7750 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
7751 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
7754 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
7755 can visit them by short forms of their names.
7757 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
7758 Emacs Lisp function at point.
7760 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
7762 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
7763 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
7765 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
7767 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
7769 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
7771 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
7772 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
7774 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
7775 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
7776 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
7777 original place after inserting the copy.
7779 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
7782 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
7783 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
7784 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
7786 Enable mouse-drag with:
7787 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
7789 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
7791 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
7792 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
7794 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
7795 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
7799 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
7800 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
7801 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
7802 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
7803 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
7804 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
7805 instance) and vice versa.
7807 To use this package load it using
7808 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
7809 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
7810 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
7811 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
7812 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
7813 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
7815 *** Interface to ph.
7817 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
7819 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
7820 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
7823 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
7825 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
7826 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
7827 while the real cursor does not move.
7829 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
7830 for visiting your favorite web sites.
7832 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
7833 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
7837 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
7838 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
7839 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
7840 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
7842 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
7844 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
7846 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
7848 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
7849 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
7850 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
7851 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
7852 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
7854 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
7855 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
7856 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
7857 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
7858 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
7859 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
7861 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
7863 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
7864 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
7865 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
7866 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
7868 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
7869 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
7871 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
7872 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
7875 ** Basic Lisp changes
7877 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
7878 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
7880 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
7881 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
7884 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
7886 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
7888 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7889 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7891 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7892 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7895 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7897 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7899 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7901 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7902 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7903 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7906 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7907 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7908 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7910 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7911 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7912 adding one of these suffixes.
7914 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7915 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7916 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7918 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7919 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7921 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7923 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7924 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7926 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7927 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7929 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7931 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7932 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7934 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7935 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7936 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7937 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7939 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7940 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7943 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7944 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7945 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7948 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7949 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7952 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7954 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7955 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7956 Then it returns that string.
7958 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7960 (with-output-to-string
7961 (princ "The buffer is ")
7962 (princ (buffer-name)))
7964 returns "The buffer is foo".
7966 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7969 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7970 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7971 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7973 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7974 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7976 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7977 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7978 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7979 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7980 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7981 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7983 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7984 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7985 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7988 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7989 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7990 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7991 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7992 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7994 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7995 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7996 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7997 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7999 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
8000 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
8002 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
8004 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
8005 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
8006 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
8007 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
8010 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
8011 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
8014 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
8016 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
8017 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
8018 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
8019 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
8020 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
8022 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
8024 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
8025 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
8026 more than the number of characters.
8028 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
8029 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
8030 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
8031 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
8032 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
8033 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
8035 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
8036 and returns a string containing those characters.
8038 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
8039 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
8040 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
8041 character, sref signals an error.
8043 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
8044 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
8045 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
8047 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
8048 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
8049 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
8051 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
8052 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
8053 to a vector of the characters in it.
8055 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
8056 of a string. You call it as follows:
8058 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
8060 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
8061 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
8062 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
8063 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
8064 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
8066 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
8067 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
8069 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
8070 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
8072 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
8073 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
8074 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
8075 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
8077 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
8079 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
8081 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
8082 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
8083 are not included in the resulting value.
8085 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
8086 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
8087 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
8088 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
8090 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
8091 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
8092 character extends across that column), then the padding character
8093 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
8094 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
8095 column START-COLUMN.
8097 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
8098 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
8099 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
8100 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
8101 changed text, before the change.
8103 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
8104 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
8105 one character set for each script, not for each language.
8107 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
8109 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
8111 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
8112 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
8114 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
8115 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
8116 which identify the character within that character set.
8118 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
8119 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
8120 opposite of split-char.
8122 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
8123 of all the characters between BEG and END.
8125 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
8126 of all the characters in a string.
8128 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
8129 and specifying coding systems.
8131 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
8132 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
8133 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
8134 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
8135 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
8136 as what to do about code conversion.)
8138 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
8139 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
8141 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
8142 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
8143 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
8145 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
8146 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
8147 to match against a file name.
8149 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
8150 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
8151 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
8152 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
8153 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
8154 specifies the coding system for encoding.
8156 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
8157 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
8159 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
8160 the coding system to use for network sockets.
8162 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
8163 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
8164 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
8167 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
8168 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
8169 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
8170 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
8171 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
8172 specifies the coding system for encoding.
8174 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
8175 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
8177 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
8178 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
8179 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
8180 start the subprocess.
8182 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
8183 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
8184 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
8185 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
8186 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
8188 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
8189 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
8192 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
8193 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
8194 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
8195 connection permanently or until overridden.
8197 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
8198 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
8199 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
8200 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
8201 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
8202 system for one operation at a time.
8204 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
8205 files, subprocesses or network connections.
8207 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
8208 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
8209 The value is a cons cell,
8210 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
8211 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
8212 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
8213 input to the subprocess.
8215 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
8216 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
8218 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
8219 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
8220 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
8222 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
8223 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
8224 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
8225 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
8228 Thus, instead of writing
8230 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
8231 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
8233 you would now write this:
8235 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
8236 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
8240 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
8241 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
8242 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
8243 for a description of them.
8245 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
8246 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
8248 (defgroup ispell nil
8249 "Spell checking using Ispell."
8252 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
8253 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
8254 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
8255 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
8256 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
8258 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
8259 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
8260 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
8261 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
8262 first-level subgroups.
8264 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
8266 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
8267 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
8271 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
8272 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
8273 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
8274 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
8275 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
8276 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
8278 ** Text property changes
8280 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
8283 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
8284 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
8285 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
8286 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
8287 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
8289 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
8290 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
8291 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
8292 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
8294 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
8295 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
8296 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
8298 ** Changes in invisibility features
8300 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
8301 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
8302 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
8303 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
8304 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
8305 make the overlay visible.
8307 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
8308 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
8309 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
8310 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
8311 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
8312 t when it should hide it.
8314 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
8316 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
8317 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
8318 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
8319 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
8320 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
8321 Here is an example of how to do this:
8323 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
8324 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
8325 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
8326 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
8329 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
8332 ;; When done with the overlays:
8333 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
8335 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
8337 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
8339 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
8340 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
8341 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
8342 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
8344 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
8345 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
8346 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
8348 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
8349 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
8351 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
8352 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
8354 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
8355 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
8356 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
8358 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
8359 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
8360 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
8361 determine the syntax type of the character.
8363 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
8364 of the current buffer.
8366 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
8367 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
8368 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
8370 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
8371 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
8372 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
8373 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
8374 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
8376 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
8379 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
8380 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
8381 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
8383 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
8384 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
8385 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
8386 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
8387 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
8389 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
8390 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
8391 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
8393 ** Changes in face features
8395 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
8396 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
8398 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
8399 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
8401 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
8402 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
8404 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
8405 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
8407 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
8408 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
8409 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
8410 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
8413 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
8414 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
8416 ** Changes in file-handling functions
8418 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
8419 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
8420 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
8421 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
8423 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
8426 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
8427 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
8429 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
8430 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
8432 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
8433 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
8435 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
8436 character code conversion as well as other things.
8438 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
8439 (formerly it did not).
8441 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
8442 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
8444 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
8445 instead of constant strings.
8447 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
8448 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
8449 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
8451 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
8452 in the same way as before.
8454 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
8455 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
8456 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
8458 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
8459 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
8460 else, and returns nil.
8462 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
8463 directory cannot be listed.
8465 ** Changes in minibuffer input
8467 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
8468 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
8469 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
8470 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
8473 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
8474 It is available through the history command M-n.
8476 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
8477 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
8478 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
8479 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
8480 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
8482 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
8483 argument in this way.
8485 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
8486 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
8487 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
8489 ** Echo area features
8491 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
8492 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
8493 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
8494 after the echo area is cleared.
8496 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
8497 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
8499 ** Keyboard input features
8501 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
8502 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
8504 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
8505 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
8508 ** Frame-related changes
8510 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
8511 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
8512 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
8514 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
8515 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
8516 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
8518 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
8519 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
8520 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
8521 in the selected frame.
8523 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
8524 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
8525 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
8527 ** X Windows features
8529 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
8530 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
8531 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
8533 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
8534 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
8536 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
8537 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
8538 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
8540 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
8541 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
8543 ** Subprocess features
8545 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
8546 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
8549 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
8550 and returns the output from the command as a string.
8552 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
8553 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
8555 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
8556 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
8558 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
8559 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
8560 goes after the other menu items.
8562 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
8563 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
8564 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
8567 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
8568 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
8570 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
8571 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
8574 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
8575 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
8576 but its hook is still run.
8578 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
8579 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
8581 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
8582 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
8583 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
8585 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
8586 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
8587 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
8590 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
8591 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
8593 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
8594 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
8595 functions like display-time.
8597 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
8598 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
8600 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
8601 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
8602 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
8604 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
8605 if there is an error in compilation.
8607 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
8608 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
8609 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
8610 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
8612 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
8613 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
8614 the *scratch* buffer.
8616 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
8617 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
8618 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
8619 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
8621 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
8622 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
8623 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
8625 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
8626 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
8627 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
8628 and compose-mail-other-frame.
8630 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
8631 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
8632 full name of the specified user will be returned.
8634 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
8635 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
8636 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
8637 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
8638 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
8641 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
8642 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
8643 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
8644 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
8646 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
8647 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
8648 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
8649 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
8651 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
8653 ** imenu.el changes.
8655 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
8656 item from menu created by imenu.
8658 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
8659 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
8660 select one of those items.
8662 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8664 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8665 Copyright information:
8667 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8669 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8670 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8671 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8672 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8674 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8675 of this document, or of portions of it,
8676 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8677 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8681 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"