2 @c This is part of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
3 @c Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 @c See the file elisp.texi for copying conditions.
6 @c This node must have no pointers.
8 @node Antinews, GNU Free Documentation License, System Interface, Top
9 @appendix Emacs 20 Antinews
11 For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about
12 downgrading to Emacs version 20.4. We hope you will enjoy the greater
13 simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 21 features. In
14 the following section, we carry this information back to Emacs
15 20.3, for which the previous printed edition of this manual was made.
17 @section Old Lisp Features in Emacs 20
21 The @code{push} and @code{pop} macros are not defined.
22 Neither are @code{dolist} and @code{dotimes}.
25 You can't display images in buffers. (Emacs is meant for editing text.)
26 With no images, there are no display margins, and no tool bars.
29 The @code{display} text property has no special meaning; you can use it
30 freely in Lisp programs, with no effects except what you implement for
31 yourself. With no images, who needs the @code{display} text property?
34 The @code{field} text property has no special meaning; buffers are no
35 longer subdivided into fields. (The division of information into
36 fields is always rather arbitrary.)
39 Faces have fewer attributes. The attributes @code{:family},
40 @code{:height}, @code{:width}, @code{:weight}, and @code{:slant},
41 have been replaced with a font name, a ``bold'' flag, and an
44 The attributes @code{:overline}, @code{:strike-through} and @code{:box}
45 have been eliminated too. Underlining now always has the same color as
46 the text---using any other color would be bad taste.
48 With fewer font attributes, there are no functions
49 @code{set-face-attribute} and @code{face-attribute}. Instead, you
50 access these attributes using functions such as @code{face-font}, and
51 set them with functions such as @code{set-face-font}. (These functions
52 were available in Emacs 21, but are not as useful there.)
55 The standard faces @code{scroll-bar}, @code{menu}, @code{border},
56 @code{cursor}, and @code{mouse} have been eliminated. They are rather
57 strange, as faces, and therefore shouldn't really exist. You can use
58 @code{set-border-color}, @code{set-cursor-color} and
59 @code{set-mouse-color} to specify the colors for the frame border, the
60 text cursor, and the mouse cursor. To specify menu colors, use X
64 Colors and other face attributes are no longer supported on character
65 terminals, so you no longer have to worry about terminals making faces
69 Emacs will respect your peace and quiet, aside from occasional beeps,
70 because there are no facilities for playing sounds.
73 Emacs 20 provides a complex and badly designed method for handling
74 character composition for languages such as Thai that display several
75 letters as a single combined image. We are too ashamed of it to tell
76 you any more than that.
79 @code{delete-and-extract-region} has been deleted; instead, use
80 @code{buffer-substring} to extract the text, then use
81 @code{delete-region} to delete it.
84 Regular expressions do not support the POSIX character classes
85 such as @samp{[:alpha:]}. All characters are created equal.
88 Hash tables have been eliminated; use alists instead.
91 The Lisp printer does not detect and report circular structure. That is
92 ok, because the Lisp reader cannot recreate circular structure anyway.
93 However, there is a library @samp{cust-print.el} which can report
97 Emacs provides its own implementation of scroll bars, instead
98 of using those of the X toolkit. They always use the frame foreground
99 and background colors, so you cannot specify different colors for
103 For simplicity, all @sc{ascii} characters now have the same height and width.
104 (Certain characters, such as Chinese characters, always have twice
105 the standard width.) All characters are created equal.
108 You can now resize any Emacs window, and size changes in one window can
109 propagate to all others. Windows can no longer use
110 @code{window-size-fixed} to get special privileges.
113 The function @code{intern-soft} no longer accepts a symbol as argument.
116 The function @code{bitmap-spec-p} has been renamed to
117 @code{pixmap-spec-p} to encourage users to practice Emacs' help system
118 while trying to find it.
121 Tooltips operate using ordinary Emacs frames.
124 Areas of the mode line are not mouse-sensitive; however, some mouse
125 commands are available for the mode line as a whole.
128 Windows cannot have header lines. Conversely, there is no way to turn
129 off the mode line of a window unless it is a minibuffer.
132 Plain dashes are the only separators you can use in a menu.
135 Vertical fractional scrolling does not exist.
138 The functions @code{format} and @code{message} ignore and discard text
142 The function @code{propertize} does not exist;
143 you can get the job done using @code{set-text-properties}.
146 Colors are supported only on window systems, not on text-only terminals.
147 So the support functions for colors on text-only terminals are
148 not needed, and have been eliminated.
151 The functions @code{color-values}, @code{color-defined-p} and
152 @code{defined-colors} have been renamed to @code{x-color-values},
153 @code{x-color-defined-p} and @code{x-defined-colors}.
156 Windows cannot be made fixed-width or fixed-height;
157 Emacs will adjust the size of all windows when it needs to.
160 The string used as the value of the @code{before-string} or
161 @code{after-string} property must contain only characters that display
162 as a single column---control characters, including tabs and newlines,
163 will give strange results.
166 The minibuffer prompt does not actually appear in content of the
167 minibuffer; it is displayed specially in the minibuffer window.
170 The ``exclusive open'' feature of @code{write-region}
171 has been eliminated; any non-@code{nil} value for the seventh
172 argument now means to ask the user for confirmation.
175 The function @code{buffer-size} always reports on the
179 The function @code{assoc-delete-all} has itself been deleted.
183 The keyword @code{:set-after} no longer does anything in
187 The variable @code{small-temporary-file-directory} has no special
188 meaning. There's only one variable for specifying which directory to
189 use for temporary files, @code{temporary-file-directory}, but not all
190 Emacs features use it anyway. Some use the @code{TMP} environment
191 variable, and some use the @code{TMPDIR} environment variable.
194 If the second argument of @code{save-some-buffers}, @var{pred}, is not
195 @code{nil}, then the precise value no longer matters. Any
196 non-@code{nil} value means the same as @code{t}: offer to save each
197 non-file buffer that has a non-@code{nil} value for
198 @code{buffer-offer-save}.
201 The variable @code{inhibit-modification-hooks}
202 has no special meaning.
205 The hook @code{fontification-functions} has been eliminated,
206 but there are other hooks, such as @code{window-scroll-functions},
207 that you can use to do a similar job.
210 The variable @code{redisplay-dont-pause}
211 has no special meaning.
214 The hook @code{calendar-move-hook} has been deleted.
217 The function @code{move-to-column} treats any non-@code{nil}
218 second argument just like @code{t}.
221 @section Old Lisp Features in Emacs 20.3
223 Here are the most important of the features that you will learn
224 to do without in Emacs 20.3:
226 Here are changes in the Lisp language itself:
230 The functions @code{line-beginning-position} and @code{line-end-position}
231 have been eliminated.
234 The functions @code{directory-files-and-attributes},
235 @code{file-attributes-lessp}, and @code{file-expand-wildcards}, have
239 The functions @code{decode-coding-region} and @code{encode-coding-region}
240 leave text properties untouched, in case that is useful. (It rarely makes
244 The functions @code{position-bytes} and @code{byte-to-position} have
248 Temporary buffers made with @code{with-output-to-temp-buffer} are now
249 modifiable by default, and use Fundamental mode rather than Help mode.
252 The functions @code{sref} interprets its @var{index} argument as a
253 number of bytes, not a number of characters. And the function
254 @code{char-bytes} actually tries to report on the number of bytes that a
258 The function @code{process-running-child-p} has been eliminated.
261 The function @code{interrupt-process} and similar functions no longer do
262 anything special when the second argument is @code{lambda}.
265 The function @code{define-prefix-command} accepts only two arguments.
268 The meaning of the second argument to @code{read-char},
269 @code{read-event}, and @code{read-char-exclusive} has been reversed:
270 they use the current input method if the argument is if @code{nil}.
273 The function @code{with-temp-message} has been eliminated.
276 The function @code{clear-this-command-keys} has been eliminated.
279 The functions @code{gap-position} and @code{gap-size} have been eliminated.
282 In @code{modify-face}, an argument of @code{(nil)} has no special
286 The base64 conversion functions have been eliminated.
289 Wildcard support has been eliminated from @code{find-file}
290 and allied functions.
293 @code{file-attributes} returns the file size and the file inode number
294 only as a simple integer.