1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 1992.
2 Copyright (C) 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 For older news, see the file OONEWS.
7 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.30.
9 ** Be sure to recompile your byte-compiled Emacs Lisp files
10 if you last compiled them with Emacs 19.28 or earlier.
11 You can use M-x byte-force-recompile to recompile all the .elc files
12 in a specified directory.
14 ** Emacs now provides multiple-frame support on Windows NT
17 ** M-x column-number-mode toggles a minor mode which displays
18 the current column number in the mode line.
20 ** Line Number mode is now enabled by default.
22 ** M-x what-line now displays the line number in the accessible
23 portion of the buffer as well as the line number in the full buffer,
24 when narrowing is in effect.
26 ** If you type a M-x command that has an equivalent key binding,
27 the equivalent is shown in the minibuffer before the command executes.
28 This feature is enabled by default for the sake of beginning users.
29 You can turn the feature off by setting suggest-key-bindings to nil.
31 ** The menu bar is now visible on text-only terminals. To choose a
32 command from the menu bar when you have no mouse, type M-`
33 (Meta-Backquote) or F10. To turn off menu bar display,
34 do (menu-bar-mode -1).
36 ** Whenever you invoke a minibuffer, it appears in the minibuffer
37 window that the current frame uses.
39 Emacs can only use one minibuffer window at a time. If you activate
40 the minibuffer while a minibuffer window is active in some other
41 frame, the outer minibuffer window disappears while the inner one is
44 ** Echo area messages always appear in the minibuffer window that the
45 current frame uses. If a minibuffer is active in some other frame,
46 the echo area message does not hide it even temporarily.
48 ** The minibuffer now has a menu-bar menu. You can use it to exit or
49 abort the minibuffer, or to ask for completion.
51 ** Dead-key and composite character processing is done in the standard
52 X11R6 manner (through the default "input method" using the
53 /usr/lib/X11/locale/*/Compose databases of key combinations). I.e. if
54 it works in xterm, it should also work in emacs now.
58 *** You can now use the mouse when running Emacs in an xterm.
59 Use M-x xterm-mouse-mode to let emacs take control over the mouse.
61 *** C-mouse-1 now once again provides a menu of buffers to select.
62 S-mouse-1 is now the way to select a default font for the frame.
64 *** There is a new mouse-scroll-min-lines variable to control the
65 minimum number of lines scrolled by dragging the mouse outside a
68 *** Dragging mouse-1 on a vertical line that separates windows
69 now moves the line, thus changing the widths of the two windows.
70 (This feature is available only if you don't have vertical scroll bars.
71 If you do use them, a scroll bar separates two side-by-side windows.)
73 *** Double-click mouse-1 on a character with "symbol" syntax (such as
74 underscore, in C mode) selects the entire symbol surrounding that
75 character. (Double-click mouse-1 on a letter selects a whole word.)
77 ** When incremental search wraps around to the beginning (or end) of
78 the buffer, if you keep on searching until you go past the original
79 starting point of the search, the echo area changes from "Wrapped" to
80 "Overwrapped". That tells you that you are revisiting matches that
81 you have already seen.
85 *** If the variable colon-double-space is non-nil, the explicit fill
86 commands put two spaces after a colon.
88 *** Auto-Fill mode now supports Adaptive Fill mode just as the
89 explicit fill commands do. The variable adaptive-fill-regexp
90 specifies a regular expression to match text at the beginning of
91 a line that should be the fill prefix.
93 *** Adaptive Fill mode can take a fill prefix from the first line of a
94 paragraph, *provided* that line is not a paragraph-starter line.
96 Paragraph-starter lines are indented lines that start a new
97 paragraph because they are indented. This indentation shouldn't
98 be copied to additional lines.
100 Whether indented lines are paragraph lines depends on the value of the
101 variable paragraph-start. Some major modes set this; you can set it
102 by hand or in mode hooks as well. For editing text in which paragraph
103 first lines are not indented, and which contains paragraphs in which
104 all lines are indented, you should use Indented Text mode or arrange
105 for paragraph-start not to match these lines.
107 *** You can specify more complex ways of choosing a fill prefix
108 automatically by setting `adaptive-fill-function'. This function
109 is called with point after the left margin of a line, and it should
110 return the appropriate fill prefix based on that line.
111 If it returns nil, that means it sees no fill prefix in that line.
115 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has been rewritten and expanded. Most
116 things that worked with the old version should still work with the new
117 version. Code that relies heavily on Gnus internals is likely to
120 *** Incompatibilities with the old GNUS.
122 **** All interactive commands have kept their names, but many internal
123 functions have changed names.
125 **** The summary mode gnus-uu commands have been moved from the `C-c
126 C-v' keymap to the `X' keymap.
128 **** There can now be several summary buffers active at once.
129 Variables that are relevant to each summary buffer are buffer-local to
132 **** Old hilit code doesn't work at all. Gnus performs its own
133 highlighting based not only on what's visible in the buffer, but on
134 other data structures.
136 **** Old packages like `expire-kill' will no longer work.
138 **** `C-c C-l' in the group buffer no longer switches to a different
139 buffer, but instead lists killed groups in the group buffer.
143 **** The look of all buffers can be changed by setting format-like
146 **** Local spool and several NNTP servers can be used at once.
148 **** Groups can be combined into virtual groups.
150 **** Different mail formats can be read much the same way as one would
151 read newsgroups. All the mail backends implement mail expiry schemes.
153 **** Gnus can use various strategies for gathering threads that have
154 lost their roots (thereby gathering loose sub-threads into one thread)
155 or it can go back and retrieve enough headers to build a complete
158 **** Killed groups can be read.
160 **** Gnus can do partial group updates - you do not have to retrieve
161 the entire active file just to check for new articles in a few groups.
163 **** Gnus implements a sliding scale of subscribedness to groups.
165 **** You can score articles according to any number of criteria. You
166 can get Gnus to score articles for you using adaptive scoring.
168 **** Gnus maintains a dribble buffer that is auto-saved the normal
169 Emacs manner, so it should be difficult to lose much data on what you
170 have read if your machine should go down.
172 **** Gnus now has its own startup file (`.gnus.el') to avoid
173 cluttering up the `.emacs' file.
175 **** You can set the process mark on both groups and articles and
176 perform operations on all the marked items.
178 **** You can grep through a subset of groups and create a group from
181 **** You can list subsets of groups using matches on group names or
184 **** You can browse foreign servers and subscribe to groups from those
187 **** Gnus can pre-fetch articles asynchronously on a second connection
190 **** You can cache articles locally.
192 **** Gnus can fetch FAQs to and descriptions of groups.
194 **** Digests (and other files) can be used as the basis for groups.
196 **** Articles can be highlighted and customized.
198 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
200 *** General changes (all backends).
202 VC directory listings (C-x v d) are now kept up to date when you do a
203 vc-next-action (C-x v v) on the marked files. The `g' command updates
204 the buffer properly. `=' in a VC dired buffer produces a version
205 control diff, not an ordinary diff.
209 Under CVS, you no longer need to type C-x C-q before you can edit a
210 file. VC doesn't write-protect unmodified buffers anymore; you can
211 freely change them at any time. The mode line keeps track of the
214 If you do want unmodified files to be write-protected, set your
215 CVSREAD environment variable. VC sees this and behaves accordingly;
216 that will give you the behaviour of Emacs 19.29, similar to that under
217 RCS and SCCS. In this mode, if the variable vc-mistrust-permissions
218 is nil, VC learns the modification state from the file permissions.
219 When setting CVSREAD for the first time, you should check out the
220 whole module anew, so that the file permissions are set correctly.
222 VC also works with remote repositories now. When you visit a file, it
223 doesn't run "cvs status" anymore, so there shouldn't be any long delays.
225 Directory listings under VC/CVS have been enhanced. Type C-x v d, and
226 you get a list of all files in or below the current directory that are
227 not up-to-date. The actual status (modified, merge, conflict, ...) is
228 displayed for each file. If you give a prefix argument (C-u C-x v d),
229 up-to-date files are also listed. You can mark any number of files,
230 and execute the next logical version control command on them (C-x v v).
232 *** Starting a new branch.
234 If you try to lock a version that is not the latest on its branch,
235 VC asks for confirmation in the minibuffer. If you say no, it offers
236 to lock the latest version instead.
238 *** RCS non-strict locking.
240 VC can now handle RCS non-strict locking, too. In this mode, working
241 files are always writable and you needn't lock the file before making
242 changes, similar to the default mode under CVS. To enable non-strict
243 locking for a file, use the "rcs -U" command.
245 *** Sharing RCS master files.
247 If you share RCS subdirs with other users (through symbolic links),
248 and you always want to work on the latest version, set
249 vc-consult-headers to nil and vc-mistrust-permissions to `t'.
250 Then you see the state of the *latest* version on the mode line, not
251 that of your working file. When you do a check out, VC overwrites
252 your working file with the latest version from the master.
254 *** RCS customization.
256 There is a new variable vc-consult-headers. If it is t (the default),
257 VC searches for RCS headers in working files (like `$Id$') and
258 determines the state of the file from them, not from the master file.
259 This is fast and more reliable when you use branches. (The variable
260 was already present in Emacs 19.29, but didn't get mentioned in the
265 *** New calendars supported: Chinese, Coptic, Ethiopic
267 Here are the commands for converting to and from these calendars:
269 gC: calendar-goto-chinese-date
270 gk: calendar-goto-coptic-date
271 ge: calendar-goto-ethiopic-date
273 pC: calendar-print-chinese-date
274 pk: calendar-print-coptic-date
275 pe: calendar-print-ethiopic-date
277 *** Printed calendars
279 Calendar mode now has commands to produce fancy printed calendars via
280 LaTeX. You can ask for a calendar for one or more days, weeks, months
281 or years. The commands all start with `t'; see the manual for a list
284 *** New sexp diary entry type
286 Reminders that apply in the days leading up to an event.
288 ** The CC-mode package now provides the default C and C++ modes.
289 See the manual for documentation of its features.
291 ** The uniquify package chooses buffer names differently when you
292 visit multiple files with the same name (in different directories).
294 ** RMAIL now always uses the movemail program when it renames an
295 inbox file, so that it can interlock properly with the mailer
296 no matter where it is delivering mail.
298 ** tex-start-of-header and tex-end-of-header are now regular expressions,
301 ** To enable automatic uncompression of compressed files,
302 type M-x auto-compression-mode. (This command used to be called
303 toggle-auto-compression, but was not documented before.) In Lisp,
306 (auto-compression-mode 1)
310 ** The new pc-select package emulates the key bindings for cutting and
311 pasting, and selection of regions, found in Windows, Motif, and the
314 ** Help buffers now use a special major mode, Help mode. This mode
315 normally turns on View mode; it also provides a hook, help-mode-hook,
316 which you can use for other customization.
318 ** Apropos now uses faces for enhanced legibility. It now describes
319 symbol properties as well as their function definitions and variable
320 values. You can use Mouse-2 or RET to get more information about a
321 function definition, variable, or property.
325 *** Supports Scheme, TCL and Help modes
327 For example, to automatically turn on Font Lock mode in the *Help*
330 (add-hook 'help-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
334 *** Enhanced fontification
336 The structure of font-lock-keywords is extended to allow "anchored" keywords.
337 Typically, a keyword item of font-lock-keywords comprises a regexp to search
338 for and information to specify how the regexp should be highlighted. However,
339 the highlighting information is extended so that it can be another keyword
340 item. This keyword item, its regexp and highlighting information, is processed
341 before resuming with the keyword item of which it is part.
343 For example, a typical keyword item might be:
345 ("\\<anchor\\>" (0 anchor-face))
347 which fontifies each occurrence of the discrete word "anchor" in the value of
348 the variable anchor-face. However, the highlighting information can be used to
349 fontify text that is anchored to the word "anchor". For example:
351 ("\\<anchor\\>" (0 anchor-face) ("\\=[ ,]*\\(item\\)" nil nil (1 item-face)))
353 which fontifies each occurrence of "anchor" as above, but for each occurrence
354 of "anchor", each occurrence of "item", in any following comma separated list,
355 is fontified in the value of the variable item-face. Thus the "item" text is
356 anchored to the "anchor" text. See the variable documentation for further
359 This feature is used to extend the level and quality of fontification in a
360 number of modes. For example, C/C++ modes now have level 3 decoration that
361 includes the fontification of variable and function names in declaration lists.
362 In this instance, the "anchor" described in the above example is a type or
363 class name, and an "item" is a variable or function name.
365 *** Fontification levels
367 The variables font-lock-maximum-decoration and font-lock-maximum-size are
368 extended to specify levels and sizes for specific modes. The variable
369 font-lock-maximum-decoration specifies the preferred level of fontification for
370 modes that provide multiple levels (typically from "subdued" to "gaudy"). The
371 variable font-lock-maximum-size specifies the buffer size for which buffer
372 fontification is suppressed when Font Lock mode is turned on (typically because
373 it would take too long).
375 These variables can now specify values for individual modes, by supplying
376 lists of mode names and values. For example, to use the above mentioned level
377 3 decoration for buffers in C/C++ modes, and default decoration otherwise, put:
379 (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration '((c-mode . 3) (c++-mode . 3)))
381 in your ~/.emacs. Maximum buffer size values for individual modes are
382 specified in the same way with the variable font-lock-maximum-size.
384 *** Font Lock configuration
386 The mechanism to provide default settings for Font Lock mode are the variables
387 font-lock-defaults and font-lock-maximum-decoration. Typically, you should
388 only need to change the value of font-lock-maximum-decoration. However, to
389 support Font Lock mode for buffers in modes that currently do not support Font
390 Lock mode, you should set a buffer local value of font-lock-defaults for that
391 mode, typically via its mode hook.
393 These variables are used by Font Lock mode to set the values of the variables
394 font-lock-keywords, font-lock-keywords-only, font-lock-syntax-table,
395 font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function and font-lock-keywords-case-fold-search.
397 You need not set these variables directly, and should not set them yourself
398 since the underlining mechanism may change in future.
400 ** Archive mode is now the default mode for various sorts of
401 archive files (files whose names end with .arc, .lzh, .zip, and .zoo).
403 ** You can automatically update the years in copyright notice by
404 means of (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'copyright-update).
405 Optionally it can update the GPL version as well.
407 ** Scripts of various languages (Shell, AWK, Perl, makefiles ...) can
408 be automatically provided with a magic number and be made executable
409 by their respective modes under control of various user variables.
410 The mode must call (executable-set-magic "perl") or
411 (executable-set-magic "make" "-f"). The latter for example has no
412 effect on [Mm]akefile.
414 ** Shell script mode now supports over 15 different shells. The new
415 command C-c ! executes the region, and optionally beginning of script
416 as well, by passing them to the shell.
418 Cases such as `sh' being a `bash' are now accounted for.
419 Fontification now also does variables, the magic number and all
420 builtin commands. Shell script mode no longer mingles `tab-width' and
421 indentation style. The variable `sh-tab-width' has been renamed to
422 `sh-indentation'. Empty lines are now indented like previous
423 non-empty line, rather than just previous line.
425 The annoying $ variable prompting has been eliminated. Instead, shell
426 script mode uses `comint-dynamic-completion' for commands, variables
429 ** Two-column mode now automatically scrolls both buffers together,
430 which makes it possible to eliminate the special scrolling commands
433 The commands that operate in two-column mode are no longer bound to
434 keys outside that mode. f2 o will now position at the same point in
437 the new command f2 RET inserts a newline in both buffers, at point and
438 at the corresponding position in the associated buffer.
440 ** Skeleton commands now work smoothly as abbrev definitions. The
441 element < no longer exists, ' is a new element.
443 ** The autoinsert insert facility for prefilling empty files as soon
444 as they are found has been extended to accommodate skeletons or calling
445 functions. See the function auto-insert.
449 Loading tpu-edt no longer turns on tpu-edt mode. In fact, it is no
450 longer necessary to explicitly load tpu-edt. All you need to do to
451 turn on tpu-edt is run the tpu-edt function. Here's how to run
452 tpu-edt instead of loading the file:
454 Running Emacs: Type emacs -f tpu-edt
457 Within Emacs: Type M-x tpu-edt <ret>
458 not M-x load-library <ret> tpu-edt <ret>
460 In .emacs: Use (tpu-edt)
463 The default name of the tpu-edt X key definition file has changed from
464 ~/.tpu-gnu-keys to ~/.tpu-keys. If you don't rename the file yourself,
465 tpu-edt will offer to rename it the first time you invoke it under
468 ** MS-DOS Enhancements:
470 *** Better mouse control by adding the following functions [in dosfns.c]
471 msdos-mouse-enable, msdos-mouse-disable, msdos-mouse-init.
473 *** If another foreground/background color than the default is setup in
474 your ~/_emacs, then the screen briefly flickers with the default
475 colors before changing to the colors you have specified. To avoid
476 this, the EMACSCOLORS environment variable exists. It shall be
477 defined as a string with the following elements:
479 set EMACSCOLORS=fb;fb
481 The first set of "fb" defines the initial foreground and background
482 colors using standard dos color numbers (0=black,.., 7=white).
483 If specified, the second set of "fb" defines the colors which are
484 restored when you leave emacs.
486 *** The new SUSPEND environment variable can now be set as the shell to
487 use when suspending emacs. This can be used to override the stupid
488 limitation on the environment of sub-shells in MS-DOS (they are just
489 large enough to hold the currently defined variables, not leaving
490 room for more); to overcome this limitation, add this to autoexec.bat:
492 set SUSPEND=%COMSPEC% /E:2000
494 ** The escape character can now be displayed on X frames. Try
496 (aset standard-display-table 27 (vector 27))
497 after first creating a display table (you can do that by loading
498 the disp-table library).
500 ** The new command-line option --eval specifies an expression to evaluate
501 from the command line.
503 ** etags has now the ability to tag Perl files. They are recognised
504 either by the .pm and .pl suffixes or by a first line which starts
505 with `#!' and specifies a Perl interpreter. The tagged lines are
506 those beginning with the `sub' keyword.
508 New suffixes recognised are .hpp for C++; .f90 for Fortran; .bib,
509 .ltx, .TeX for TeX (.bbl, .dtx removed); .ml for Lisp; .prolog for
510 prolog (.pl is now Perl).
512 ** The files etc/termcap.dat and etc/termcap.ucb have been replaced
513 with a new, merged, and much more comprehensive termcap file. The
514 new file should include all the special entries from the old one.
515 This new file is under active development as part of the ncurses
516 project. If you have any questions about this file, or problems with
517 an entry in it, email terminfo@ccil.org.
519 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.30.
523 *** There is a new data type called a char-table which is an array
524 indexed by a character. Currently this is mostly equivalent to a
525 vector of length 256, but in the future, when a wider character set is
526 in use, it will be different. To create one, call
527 (make-char-table SUBTYPE INITIAL-VALUE)
529 SUBTYPE is a symbol that identifies the specific use of this
530 character table. It can be any of these values:
534 keyboard-translate-table
537 The function `char-table-subtype' returns the subtype of a char-table.
538 You cannot alter the subtype of an existing char-table.
540 A char-table has an element for each character code. It also has some
541 "extra slots". The number of extra slots depends on the subtype and
542 their use depends on the subtype. (Each subtype symbol has a
543 `char-table-extra-slots' property that says how many extra slots to
544 make.) Use (char-table-extra-slot TABLE N) to access extra slot N and
545 (set-char-table-extra-slot TABLE N VALUE) to store VALUE in slot N.
547 A char-table T can have a parent, which should be another char-table
548 P. If you look for the value in T for character C, and the table T
549 actually holds nil, P's element for character C is used instead.
550 The functions `char-table-parent' and `set-char-table-parent'
551 let you read or set the parent of a char-table.
553 To scan all the values in a char-table, do not try to loop through all
554 possible character codes. That would work for now, but will not work
555 in the future. Instead, call map-char-table. (map-char-table
556 FUNCTION TABLE) calls FUNCTION once for each character or character
557 set that has a distinct value in TABLE. FUNCTION gets two arguments,
558 RANGE and VALUE. RANGE specifies a range of TABLE that has one
559 uniform value, and VALUE is the value in TABLE for that range.
561 Currently, RANGE is always a vector containing a single character
562 and it refers to that character alone. In the future, other kinds
563 of ranges will occur. You can set the value for a given range
564 with (set-char-table-range TABLE RANGE VALUE) and examine the value
565 for a range with (char-table-range TABLE RANGE).
567 *** Syntax tables are now represented as char-tables.
568 All syntax tables other than the standard syntax table
569 normally have the standard syntax table as their parent.
570 Their subtype is `syntax-table'.
572 *** Display tables are now represented as char-tables.
573 Their subtype is `display-table'.
575 *** Case tables are now represented as char-tables.
576 Their subtype is `case-table'.
578 *** The value of keyboard-translate-table may now be a char-table
579 instead of a string. Normally the char-tables used for this purpose
580 have the subtype `keyboard-translate-table', but that is not required.
582 *** A new data type called a bool-vector is a vector of values
583 that are either t or nil. To create one, do
584 (make-bool-vector LENGTH INITIAL-VALUE)
586 ** You can now specify, for each marker, how it should relocate when
587 text is inserted at the place where the marker points. This is called
588 the "insertion type" of the marker.
590 To set the insertion type, do (set-marker-insertion-type MARKER TYPE).
591 If TYPE is t, it means the marker advances when text is inserted. If
592 TYPE is nil, it means the marker does not advance. (In Emacs 19.29,
593 markers did not advance.)
595 The function marker-insertion-type reports the insertion type of a
596 given marker. The function copy-marker takes a second argument TYPE
597 which specifies the insertion type of the new copied marker.
599 ** When you create an overlay, you can specify the insertion type of
600 the beginning and of the end. To do this, you can use two new
601 arguments to make-overlay: front-advance and rear-advance.
603 ** The new function overlays-in returns a list of the overlays that
604 overlap a specified range of the buffer. The returned list includes
605 empty overlays at the beginning of this range, as well as within the
608 ** The new hook window-scroll-functions is run when a window has been
609 scrolled. The functions in this list are called just before
610 redisplay, after the new window-start has been computed. Each function
611 is called with two arguments--the window that has been scrolled, and its
612 new window-start position.
614 This hook is useful for on-the-fly fontification and other features
615 that affect how the redisplayed text will look when it is displayed.
617 The window-end value of the window is not valid when these functions
618 are called. The computation of window-end is byproduct of actual
619 redisplay of the window contents, which means it has not yet happened
620 when the hook is run. Computing window-end specially in advance for
621 the sake of these functions would cause a slowdown.
623 The hook functions can determine where the text on the window will end
624 by calling vertical-motion starting with the window-start position.
626 ** The new hook redisplay-end-trigger-functions is run whenever
627 redisplay in window uses text that extends past a specified end
628 trigger position. You set the end trigger position with the function
629 set-window-redisplay-end-trigger. The functions are called with two
630 arguments: the window, and the end trigger position. Storing nil for
631 the end trigger position turns off the feature, and the trigger value
632 is automatically reset to nil just after the hook is run.
634 You can use the function window-redisplay-end-trigger to read a
635 window's current end trigger value.
637 ** The new function insert-file-contents-literally inserts the
638 contents of a file without any character set translation or decoding.
640 ** The new function safe-length computes the length of a list.
641 It never gets an error--it treats any non-list like nil.
642 If given a circular list, it returns an upper bound for the number
643 of elements before the circularity.
645 ** replace-match now takes a fifth argument, SUBEXP. If SUBEXP is
646 non-nil, that says to replace just subexpression number SUBEXP of the
647 regexp that was matched, not the entire match. For example, after
648 matching `foo \(ba*r\)' calling replace-match with 1 as SUBEXP means
649 to replace just the text that matched `\(ba*r\)'.
651 ** The new keymap special-event-map defines bindings for certain
652 events that should be handled at a very low level--as soon as they
653 are read. The read-event function processes these events itself,
654 and never returns them.
656 Events that are handled in this way do not echo, they are never
657 grouped into key sequences, and they never appear in the value of
658 last-command-event or (this-command-keys). They do not discard a
659 numeric argument, they cannot be unread with unread-command-events,
660 they may not appear in a keyboard macro, and they are not recorded
661 in a keyboard macro while you are defining one.
663 These events do, however, appear in last-input-event immediately after
664 they are read, and this is the way for the event's definition to find
667 The events types iconify-frame, make-frame-visible and delete-frame
668 are normally handled in this way.
670 ** encode-time now supports simple date arithmetic by means of
671 out-of-range values for its SEC, MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, and MONTH
672 arguments; for example, day 0 means the day preceding the given month.
673 Also, the ZONE argument can now be a TZ-style string.
675 ** command-execute and call-interactively now accept an optional third
676 argument KEYS. If specified and non-nil, this specifies the key
677 sequence containing the events that were used to invoke the command.
679 ** The environment variable NAME, if set, now specifies the value of
680 (user-full-name), when Emacs starts up.
682 * User Editing Changes in Emacs 19.29
684 ** If you run out of memory.
686 If you get the error message "Virtual memory exhausted", type C-x s.
687 That way of saving files has the least additional memory needs. Emacs
688 19.29 keeps a reserve of memory which it makes available when this
689 error happens; that is to ensure that C-x s can complete its work.
691 Once you have saved your data, you can exit and restart Emacs, or use
692 M-x kill-some-buffers to free up space. If you kill buffers
693 containing a substantial amount of text, you can go on editing.
695 Do not use M-x buffer-menu to save or kill buffers when you are out of
696 memory, because that needs a fair amount memory itself and you may not
697 have enough to get it started.
699 ** The format of compiled files has changed incompatibly.
701 Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19.29 normally use a new format
702 that will not work in older Emacs versions. You can compile files
703 in the old format if you wish; see "Changes in compilation," below.
705 ** Emacs 19.29 supports the DEC Alpha.
707 ** Emacs runs on Windows NT.
709 This port does not yet support windowing features. It works like a
710 text-only terminal, but it does support a mouse.
712 In general, support for non-GNU-like operating systems is not a high
713 priority for the GNU project. We merged in the support for Windows NT
714 because that system is expected to be very widely used.
716 ** Emacs supports Motif widgets.
718 You can build Emacs with Motif widgets by specifying --with-x-toolkit=motif
719 when you run configure.
721 Motif defines collections of windows called "tab groups", and uses the
722 tab key and the cursor keys to move between windows in a tab group.
723 Emacs naturally does not support this--it has other uses for the tab
724 key and cursor keys. Emacs does not support Motif accelerators either,
725 because it uses its normal keymap event binding features.
727 We give higher priority to operation with a free widget set than to
728 operation with a proprietary one.
730 ** If Emacs or the computer crashes, you can recover all the files you
731 were editing from their auto save files by typing M-x recover-session.
732 This first shows you a list of recorded interrupted sessions. Move
733 point to the one you choose, and type C-c C-c.
735 Then recover-session asks about each of the files that were being
736 edited during that session, asking whether to recover that file. If
737 you answer y, it calls recover-file, which works in its normal
738 fashion. It shows the dates of the original file and its auto-save
739 file and asks once again whether to recover that file.
741 When recover-session is done, the files you've chosen to recover
742 are present in Emacs buffers. You should then save them.
743 Only this--saving them--updates the files themselves.
745 ** Menu bar menus now stay up if you click on the menu bar item and
746 release the mouse button within a certain amount of time. This is in
747 the X Toolkit version.
749 ** The menu bar menus have been rearranged and split up to make for a
750 better organization. Two new menu bar menus, Tools and Search,
751 contain items that were formerly in the Files and Edit menus, as well
752 as some that did not exist in the menu bar menus before.
754 ** Emacs can now display on more than one X display at the same time.
755 Use the command make-frame-on-display to create a frame, specifying
756 which display to use.
758 ** M-x talk-connect sets up a multi-user talk connection
759 via Emacs. Specify the X display of the person you want to talk to.
760 You can talk to any number of people (within reason) by using
761 this command repeatedly to specify different people.
763 Emacs does not make a fuss about security; the people who you talk to
764 can use all Emacs features, including visiting and editing files. If
765 this frightens you, don't use M-x talk-connect.
767 ** The range of integer values is now at least 2**28 on all machines.
768 This means the maximum size of a buffer is at least 2**27-1,
771 ** When you start Emacs, you can now specify option names in
772 long GNU form (starting with `--') and you can abbreviate the names.
774 You can now specify the options in any order.
775 The previous requirements about the order of options
776 have been eliminated.
778 The -L or --directory option lets you specify an additional
779 directory to search for Lisp libraries (including libraries
780 that you specify with the -l or --load options).
782 ** Incremental search in Transient Mark mode, if the mark is already
783 active, now leaves the mark active and does not change its position.
784 You can make incremental search deactivate the mark once again with
787 (add-hook 'isearch-mode-hook 'deactivate-mark)
789 ** C-delete now deletes a word backwards. This is for compatibility
790 with some editors in the PC world. (This key is not available on
791 ordinary ASCII terminals, because C-delete is not a distinct character
794 ** ESC ESC ESC is now a command to escape from various temporary modes
797 ** M-x pc-bindings-mode sets up bindings compatible with many PC editors.
798 In particular, Delete and its variants delete forward instead of backward.
799 Use Backspace to delete backward.
801 C-Backspace kills backward a word (as C-Delete normally would).
802 M-Backspace does undo.
803 Home and End move to beginning and end of line
804 C-Home and C-End move to beginning and end of buffer.
806 ** The key sequence for evaluating a Lisp expression using the minibuffer
807 is now ESC :. It used to be ESC ESC, but we moved it to make way for
808 the ESC ESC ESC feature, on the grounds that people who evaluate Lisp
809 expressions are experienced users and can cope with a change.
810 If you prefer the old ESC ESC binding, put in your `~/.emacs':
812 (global-set-key "\e\e" 'eval-expression)
814 ** The f1 function key is now equivalent to the help key. This is
815 done with key-translation-map; delete the binding for f1 in that map
816 if you want to use f1 for something else.
818 ** Mouse-3, in the simplest case, still sets the region. But now, it
819 places the mark where point was, and sets point where you click.
820 (It used to set the mark where you click and leave point alone.)
822 If you position point with Mouse-1, then scroll with the scroll bar
823 and use Mouse-3, Mouse-3 uses the position you specified with Mouse-1
824 even if it has scrolled off the screen (and point is no longer there).
825 This makes it easier to select a region with the mouse which is bigger
828 Any editing of the buffer, and any cursor motion or scrolling for any
829 reason other than the scroll bar, cancels the special state set up by
830 Mouse-1--so that a subsequent Mouse-3 click will use the actual value
833 ** C-mouse-3 now pops up a mode-specific menu of commands--normally
834 the same ones available in the mode's own menu bar menus.
836 ** C-mouse-2 now pops up a menu of faces, indentation, justification,
837 and certain other text properties. This menu is also available
838 through the menu-bar Edit menu. It is meant for use with Enriched
841 *** You can use this menu to change the face of the region.
842 You can also set the face of the region with the new M-g command.
844 *** The menu also includes commands for indenting the region,
845 which locally changes the values of left-margin and fill-column that
848 *** All fill functions now indent every line to the left-margin. If
849 there is also a fill-prefix, that goes after the margin indentation.
851 *** Open-line and newline also make sure that the lines they create
852 are indented to the left margin.
854 *** It also allows you to set the "justification" of the region:
855 whether it should be centered, flush right, and so forth. The fill
856 functions (including auto-fill-mode) will maintain the justification
857 and indentation that you request.
859 *** The new function `list-colors-display' shows you what colors are
860 available. This is also accessible from the C-mouse-2 menu.
862 ** You can now save and load files including their faces and other
863 text-properties by using Enriched-mode. Files are saved in an
864 extended version of the MIME text/enriched format. You can use the
865 menus described above, or M-g and other keyboard commands, to
866 alter the formatting information.
868 ** C-mouse-1 now pops up the menu for changing the frame's default font.
870 ** You can input Hyper, Super, Meta, and Alt characters, as well as
871 non-ASCII control characters, on an ASCII-only terminal.
881 These are not ordinary key sequences; they operate through
882 function-key-map, which means they can be used even in the
883 middle of an ordinary key sequence.
885 ** Outline minor mode and Hideif mode now use C-c @ as their prefix
888 ** Echo area messages are now logged in the "*Messages*" buffer. The
889 size of this buffer is limited to message-log-max lines.
891 ** RET in various special modes for read-only buffers that contain
892 lists of items now selects the item point is on. These modes include
893 Dired, Compilation buffers, Buffer-menu, Tar mode, and Occur mode.
894 (In Info, RET follows the reference near point; in completion list
895 buffers, RET chooses the completion around point.)
897 ** set-background-color now updates the modeline face in a special
898 way. If that face was previously set up to be reverse video, the
899 reverse of the default face, then set-background-color updates it so
900 that it remains the reverse of the default face.
902 ** The functions raise-frame and lower-frame are now commands.
903 When used interactively, they apply to the selected frame.
905 ** M-x buffer-menu now displays the buffer list in the selected window.
906 Use M-x buffer-menu-other-window to display it in another window.
908 ** M-w followed by a kill command now *does not* append the text in
909 the kill ring. In consequence, M-w followed by C-w works as you would
910 expect: it leaves the top of the kill ring matching the region that
913 ** In Lisp mode, the C-M-x command now executes defvar forms in a
914 special way: it unconditionally sets the variable to the specified
915 default value, if there is one. Normal execution of defvar does not
916 alter the variable if it already has a non-void value.
918 ** In completion list buffers, the left and right arrow keys run the
919 new commands previous-completion and next-completion. They move one
920 completion at a time.
922 ** While doing completion in the minibuffer, the `prior' or `pageup'
923 key switches to the completion list window.
925 ** When you exit the minibuffer with empty contents, the empty string
926 is not put in the minibuffer history.
928 ** The default buffer for insert-buffer is now the "first" buffer
929 other than the current one. If you have more than one window, this
930 is a buffer visible in another window. (Usually it is the buffer
931 that C-M-v would scroll.)
933 ** The etags program is now capable of recording tags based on regular
934 expressions provided on the command line.
936 This new feature allows easy support for constructs not normally
937 handled by etags, such as the macros frequently used in big C/C++
938 projects to define project-specific structures. It also enables the
939 use of etags and TAGS files for languages not supported by etags.
941 The Emacs manual section on Tags contains explanations and examples
942 for Emacs's DEFVAR, VHDL, Cobol, Postscript and TCL.
944 ** Various mode-specific commands that used to be bound to C-c LETTER
947 *** In gnus-uu mode, gnus-uu-interactive-scan-directory is now on C-c C-d,
948 and gnus-uu-interactive-save-current-file is on C-c C-z.
950 *** In Scribe mode, scribe-insert-environment is now on C-c C-v,
951 scribe-chapter is on C-c C-c, scribe-subsection is on C-c C-s,
952 scribe-section is on C-c C-t, scribe-bracket-region-be is on C-c C-e,
953 scribe-italicize-word is on C-c C-i, scribe-bold-word is on C-c C-b,
954 and scribe-underline-word is on C-c C-u.
956 *** In Gomoku mode, gomoku-human-takes-back is now on C-c C-b,
957 gomoku-human-plays is on C-c C-p, gomoku-human-resigns is on C-c C-r,
958 and gomoku-emacs-plays is on C-c C-e.
960 *** In the Outline mode defined in allout.el,
961 outline-rebullet-current-heading is now on C-c *.
963 ** M-s in Info now searches through the nodes of the Info file,
964 just like s. The alias M-s was added so that you can use the same
965 command for searches in both Info and Rmail.
967 ** iso-acc.el now lets you enter inverted-! and inverted-?
968 with the sequences ~! and ~?.
970 ** M-x compare-windows now pushes mark in both windows before
971 it starts moving point.
973 ** There are two new commands in Dired, A (dired-do-search)
974 and Q (dired-do-query-replace). These are similar to tags-search and
975 tags-query-replace, but instead of searching the list of files that
976 appears in a tags table, they search all the files marked in Dired.
978 ** Changes to dabbrev.
980 A new function, `dabbrev-completion' (bound to M-C-/), expands the
981 unique part of an abbreviation.
983 Dabbrev now looks for expansions in other buffers, looks for symbols
984 instead of words and it works in the minibuffer.
986 Dabbrev can be customized to work for shell scripts, with variables
987 that sometimes have and sometimes haven't a leading "$". See the
988 variable 'dabbrev-abbrev-skip-leading-regexp'.
990 ** In Rmail, the command rmail-input-menu has been eliminated. The
991 feature of selecting an Rmail file from a menu is now implemented in
994 ** Bookmarks changes.
996 *** It now works to set bookmarks in Info nodes.
998 *** Bookmarks can have annotations; type "C-h m" after doing
999 "M-x list-bookmarks", for more information on annotations.
1001 *** The bookmark-jump popup menu function is now `bookmark-menu-jump', for
1002 those who bind it to a mouse click.
1004 *** The default bookmarks file name is now "~/.emacs.bmk". If you
1005 already have a bookmarks file, it will be renamed automagically when
1008 ** New package, ps-print.
1010 The ps-print package generates PostScript printouts of buffers or
1011 regions, and includes face attributes such as color, underlining,
1012 boldface and italics in the printed output.
1014 ** New package, msb.
1016 The msb package provides a buffer-menu in the menubar with separate
1017 menus for different types of buffers.
1019 ** `cpp.el' is a new library that can highlight or hide parts of a C
1020 file according to C preprocessor conditionals. To try it, run the
1021 command M-x cpp-highlight-buffer.
1023 ** Changes in CC mode.
1025 *** c-set-offset and related functions and variables can now accept
1026 variable symbols. Also ++ and -- which mean 2* positive and negative
1027 c-basic-offset respectively.
1029 *** New variable, c-recognize-knr-p, which controls whether K&R C
1030 constructs will be recognized. Trying to recognize K&R constructs is a
1031 time hog so if you're programming strictly in ANSI C, set this
1032 variable to nil (it should already be nil in c++-mode).
1034 *** New variable, c-hanging-comment-ender-p for controlling
1035 c-fill-paragraph's behavior.
1037 *** New syntactic symbol: statement-case-open. This is assigned to lines
1038 containing an open brace just after a case/default label.
1040 *** New variable, c-progress-interval, which controls minibuffer update
1041 message displays during long re-indention. This is a new feature
1042 which prints percentage complete messages at specified intervals.
1044 ** Makefile mode changes.
1046 *** The electric keys are not enabled by default.
1048 *** There is now a mode-specific menu bar menu.
1050 *** The mode supports font-lock, add-log, and imenu.
1052 *** The command M-TAB does completion of target names and variable names.
1054 ** icomplete.el now works more like a minor mode. Use M-x icomplete-mode
1055 to turn it on and off.
1057 Icomplete now supports an `icomplete-minibuffer-setup-hook', which is
1058 run on minibuffer setup whenever icompletion will be occurring. This
1059 hook can be used to customize interoperation of icomplete with other
1060 minibuffer-specific packages, eg rsz-mini. See the doc string for
1065 Use ediff-revision instead of vc-ediff. It also replaces rcs-ediff,
1066 for those who use that; if you want to use a version control package
1067 other than vc.el, you must set the variable
1068 ediff-version-control-package to specify which package.
1070 ** VC now supports branches with RCS.
1072 You can use C-u C-x C-q to select any branch or version by number.
1073 It reads the version number or branch number with the minibuffer,
1074 then checks out the file unlocked.
1076 Type C-x C-q again to lock the selected branch or version.
1077 When you check in changes to that branch or version, there are two
1080 -- If you've selected a branch, or a version at the tip of a branch,
1081 then the new version adds to that branch. If you wish to create a
1082 new branch, use C-u C-x C-q to specify a version number when you check
1085 -- If you've selected an inner version which is not the latest in its
1086 branch, then the new version automatically creates a new branch.
1088 ** VC now supports CVS as well as RCS and SCCS.
1090 Since there are no locks in CVS, some things behave slightly
1091 different when the backend is CVS. When vc-next-action is invoked
1092 in a directory handled by CVS, it does the following:
1094 If the file is not already registered, this registers it for version
1095 control. This does a "cvs add", but no "cvs commit".
1096 If the file is added but not committed, it is committed.
1097 If the file has not been changed, neither in your working area or
1098 in the repository, a message is printed and nothing is done.
1099 If your working file is changed, but the repository file is
1100 unchanged, this pops up a buffer for entry of a log message; when you
1101 finish the log message with C-c C-c, that checks in the resulting
1102 changes along with the log message as change commentary. A writable
1103 file remains in existence.
1105 If vc-next-action changes the repository file, it asks you
1106 whether to merge in the changes into your working copy.
1108 vc-directory, when started in a CVS file hierarchy, reports
1109 all files that are modified (and thus need to be committed).
1110 (When the backend is RCS or SCCS vc-directory reports all
1113 VC has no support for running the initial "cvs checkout" to get a
1114 working copy of a module. You can only use VC in a working copy of
1117 You can disable the CVS support as follows:
1119 (setq vc-master-templates (delq 'vc-find-cvs-master vc-master-templates))
1121 or by setting vc-handle-cvs to nil.
1123 This may be desirable if you run a non-standard version of CVS, or
1124 if CVS was compiled with FORCE_USE_EDITOR or (possibly)
1127 ** Comint and shell mode changes:
1129 *** Completion works with file names containing quoted characters.
1131 File names containing special characters (such as " ", "!", etc.) that are
1132 quoted with a "\" character are recognised during completion. Special
1133 characters are quoted when they are inserted during completion.
1135 *** You can use M-x comint-truncate-buffer to truncate the buffer.
1137 When this command is run, the buffer is truncated to a maximum number
1138 of lines, specified by the variable comint-buffer-maximum-size. Just
1139 like the command comint-strip-ctrl-m, this can be run automatically
1140 during process output by doing this:
1142 (add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
1143 'comint-truncate-buffer)
1145 ** Telnet mode buffer name changed.
1147 The buffer name for a Telnet buffer is now *telnet-HOST*, not
1148 *HOST-telnet*. This is for consistency with other Emacs packages.
1150 ** M-x man (man) is now faster and more robust. On systems where the
1151 entire man page is indented, the indentation is removed.
1153 The user option names that used to end in -p now end in -flag. The
1154 new names are: Man-reuse-okay-flag, Man-downcase-section-letters-flag,
1155 Man-circular-pages-flag. The Man-notify user option has been renamed to
1156 Man-notify-method and accepts one more value, `pushy', that just
1157 switches the current buffer to the manpage buffer, without switching
1158 frames nor changing your windows configuration.
1160 A new user option Man-fontify-manpage-flag disables fontification
1161 (thus speeding up man) when set to nil. Default is to fontify if a
1162 window system is used. Two new user options Man-overstrike-face
1163 (default 'bold) and Man-underline-face (default 'underline) can be set
1164 to the preferred faces to be used for the words that man overstrikes
1165 and underlines. Useful for those who like coloured man pages.
1167 Two new interactive functions are provided: Man-cleanup-manpage and
1168 Man-fontify-manpage. Both can be used on a buffer that contains the
1169 output of a `rsh host man manpage' command, or the output of an
1170 `nroff -man -Tman manpage' command to make them readable.
1171 Man-cleanup-manpage is faster, but does not fontify.
1173 ** The new function modify-face makes it easy to specify
1174 all the attributes of a face, all at once.
1176 ** Faces now support background stippling.
1178 Use the command set-face-stipple to specify the stipple-pattern for a
1179 face. Use face-stipple to access the specified stipple pattern. The
1180 existing face functions now handle the stipple pattern when
1183 If you specify one of the standard gray colors as a face background
1184 color, and your display doesn't handle gray, Emacs automatically uses
1185 stipple instead to get the same effect.
1187 ** Changes in Font Lock mode.
1191 Two new default faces are provided; `font-lock-variable-name-face' and
1192 `font-lock-reference-face'. The face `font-lock-doc-string-face' has
1193 been removed since it is the same as the existing
1194 `font-lock-string-face'. Where appropriate, fontification
1195 automatically uses these new faces.
1197 Fontification via commands `font-lock-mode' and
1198 `font-lock-fontify-buffer' is now cleanly interruptible (i.e., with
1199 C-g). If you interrupt during the fontification process, the buffer
1200 remains in its previous modified state and all highlighting is removed
1203 For C/C++ modes, Font Lock mode is much faster but highlights much
1204 more. Other modes are faster/more extensive/more discriminatory, or a
1205 combination of these.
1207 To enable Font Lock mode, add the new function `turn-on-font-lock' in
1208 one of the following ways:
1210 (add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
1212 Or for any visited file with:
1214 (add-hook 'find-file-hooks 'turn-on-font-lock)
1216 *** Supports color and grayscale displays
1218 Font Lock mode supports different ways of highlighting, depending on
1219 the type of display and background shade. Attributes (face color,
1220 bold, italic and underline, and display type and background mode) can
1221 be controlled either from Emacs Lisp or X resources.
1223 See the new variables `font-lock-display-type' and
1224 `font-lock-face-attributes'.
1226 *** Supports more modes
1228 The following modes are directly supported:
1230 ada-mode, asm-mode, bibtex-mode, c++-c-mode, c++-mode, c-mode,
1231 change-log-mode, compilation-mode, dired-mode, emacs-lisp-mode,
1232 fortran-mode, latex-mode, lisp-mode, mail-mode, makefile-mode,
1233 outline-mode, pascal-mode, perl-mode, plain-tex-mode, rmail-mode,
1234 rmail-summary-mode, scheme-mode, shell-mode, slitex-mode, tex-mode,
1237 See the new variables `font-lock-defaults-alist' and
1238 `font-lock-defaults'.
1240 Some modes support different levels of fontification. You can choose
1241 to use the minimum or maximum available decoration by changing the
1242 value of the new variable `font-lock-maximum-decoration'.
1244 Programmers are urged to make available to the community their own
1245 keywords for modes not yet supported. See font-lock.el for
1246 information about efficiency.
1250 The fast-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by saving font choices
1251 in associated cache files. When you visit a file with Font Lock mode
1252 and Fast Lock mode turned on for the first time, the file's buffer is
1253 fontified as normal. When certain events occur (such as exiting
1254 Emacs), Fast Lock saves the highlighting in a cache file. When you
1255 subsequently visit this file, its cache is used to restore the
1258 To use this package, put in your `~/.emacs':
1260 (add-hook 'font-lock-mode-hook 'turn-on-fast-lock)
1262 To control the use of caches, see the documentation for `fast-lock-mode'.
1264 ** You can tell pop-to-buffer to display certain buffers in the selected
1265 window rather than finding some other window to display them in.
1266 There are two variables you can use to specify these buffers.
1268 same-window-buffer-names holds a list of buffer names; if a buffer's
1269 name appears in this list, pop-to-buffer puts it in the selected window.
1271 same-window-regexps holds a list of regexps--if any one of them
1272 matches a buffer's name, then pop-to-buffer puts that buffer in the
1275 The default values of these variables are not nil: they list various
1276 buffers that normally appear, when you as for them, in the selected
1277 window. These include shell buffers, mail buffers, telnet buffers,
1278 and others. By removing elements from these variables, you can ask
1279 Emacs to display those buffers in separate windows.
1281 ** The special-display-buffer-names and special-display-regexps lists
1282 have been generalized. An element may now be a list. The car of the list
1283 is the buffer name or regular expression for matching buffer names.
1285 The cdr of the list can be an alist specifying additional frame
1286 parameters for use in constructing the special display frame.
1288 Alternatively, the cdr can have this form:
1292 where FUNCTION is a symbol. Then the frame is constructed by calling
1293 FUNCTION; its first argument is the buffer, and its remaining
1296 ** If the environment variable REPLYTO is set, its value is the default
1297 for mail-default-reply-to.
1299 ** When you send a message in Emacs, if you specify an Rmail file with
1300 the FCC: header field, Emacs converts the message to Rmail format
1301 before writing it. Thus, the file never contains anything but Rmail
1304 ** The new variable mail-from-style controls whether the From: header
1305 should include the sender's full name, and if so, which format to use.
1307 ** The new variable mail-personal-alias-file specifies the name of the
1308 user's personal aliases. This defaults to the file ~/.mailrc.
1309 mailabbrev.el used to have its own variable for this purpose
1310 (mail-abbrev-mailrc-file). That variable is no longer used.
1312 ** In Buffer-Menu mode, the d and C-d commands (which mark buffers for
1313 deletion) now accept a prefix argument which serves as a repeat count.
1315 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
1317 *** Reference keys can now be entered with TAB completion. All
1318 reference keys defined in that buffer and all labels that appear in
1319 crossreference entries are object to completion.
1321 *** Braces are supported as field delimiters in addition to quotes.
1322 BibTeX entries may have brace-delimited and quote-delimited fields
1323 intermixed. The delimiters generated for new entries are specified by
1324 the variables bibtex-field-left-delimiter and
1325 bibtex-field-right-delimiter on a buffer-local basis. Those variables
1326 default to braces, since it is easier to put quote accented characters
1327 (as the german umlauts) into a brace-delimited entry.
1329 *** The function bibtex-clean-entry can now be invoked with a prefix
1330 argument. In this case, a label is automatically generated from
1331 various fields in the record. If bibtex-clean-entry is invoked on a
1332 record without label, a label is also generated automatically.
1333 Various variables (all beginning with `bibtex-autokey-') control the
1334 creation of that key. The variable bibtex-autokey-edit-before-use
1335 determines, if the user is allowed to edit auto-generated reference
1336 keys before they are used.
1338 *** A New function bibtex-complete-string completes strings with
1339 respect to the strings defined in this buffer and a set of predefined
1340 strings (initialized to the string macros defined in the standard
1341 BibTeX style files) in the same way in which ispell-complete-word
1342 works with respect to words in a dictionary. Candidates for
1343 bibtex-complete-string are initialized from variable
1344 bibtex-predefined-strings and by parsing the files found in
1345 bibtex-string-files for @String definitions.
1347 *** Every reference/field pair has now attached a comment which
1348 appears in the echo area when this field is edited. These comments
1349 should provide useful hints for BibTeX usage, especially for BibTeX
1350 beginners. New variable bibtex-help-message determines if these help
1351 messages are to appear in the minibuffer when moving to a text entry.
1353 *** Inscriptions of menu bar changed from "Entry Types" to
1354 "Entry-Types" and "Bibtex Edit" to "BibTeX-Edit".
1356 *** The variable bibtex-include-OPTcrossref is now not longer a binary
1357 switch but a list of reference names which should contain a crossref
1358 field. E.g., you can tell bibtex-mode you want a crossref field for
1359 @InProceedings and @InBook entries but for no other.
1361 *** The function validate-bibtex-buffer was completely rewritten to
1362 validate if a buffer is syntactically correct. find-bibtex-duplicates
1363 is no longer a function itself but was moved into
1364 validate-bibtex-buffer.
1366 *** Cleaning a BibTeX entry tests, if necessary fields are there.
1367 E.g., if you tell bibtex-mode to include a crossref entry, some fields
1368 are optional which would be required without the crossref entry. If
1369 you now leave the crossref entry empty and do a bibtex-clean-entry
1370 with some now required fields left empty, version 2.0 of bibtex.el
1371 complains about the absence of these fields, whereas version 1.3
1374 *** Default value for variables bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries and
1375 bibtex-sort-ignore-string-entries is now t.
1377 *** All interactive functions are renamed to begin with `bibtex-'.
1379 *** Keybindings with \C-c\C-e entry changed for unification. Often
1380 used reference types are now on control-modified keys, mediocre used
1381 types are on unmodified keys, seldom used types are on shift-modified
1382 keys and almost never used types on meta-modified keys.
1384 * Configuration Changes in Emacs 19.29
1386 ** Emacs now uses directory /usr/local/share for most of its installed
1387 files. This follows a GNU convention for directory usage.
1389 ** The option --with-x11 is no longer supported.
1390 X11 is the only version of X that Emacs 19.29 supports;
1391 use --with-x if you need to request X support explicitly.
1392 (Normally this should not be necessary, since configure should
1393 automatically enable X support if X is installed on your machine.)
1395 ** If you use the site-init.el file to set the variable
1396 mail-host-address to a string in the dumped Emacs, that string becomes
1397 the default host address for initializing user-mail-address.
1398 It is used instead of the value of (system-name).
1400 * Lisp-Level Changes in Emacs 19.29
1404 *** The range of integer values is now at least 2**28 on all machines.
1405 This means the maximum size of a buffer is at least 2**27-1,
1408 *** You can now use Common Lisp syntax for the backquote and comma
1409 macros. Thus, you can now write `(x ,y z) instead of (` (x (, y) z)).
1411 The old syntax is still accepted.
1413 *** The new function rassoc is like assoc, except that it compares the
1414 key against the cdr of each alist element, where assoc would compare
1415 it against the car of each alist element.
1417 *** The new function unintern deletes a symbol from an obarray. The
1418 first argument can be the symbol to delete, or a string giving its
1419 name. The second argument specifies the obarray (nil means the
1420 current default obarray).
1422 If the specified symbol is not in the obarray, or if there's no symbol
1423 in the obarray matching the specified string, unintern does nothing
1424 and returns nil. If it does delete a symbol, it returns t.
1426 *** You can specify an alternative read function for use by load and
1427 eval-region by binding the variable load-read-function to some other
1428 function. This function should accept one argument just like read.
1429 If load-read-function is nil, load and eval-region use ordinary read.
1431 *** The new function `type-of' takes any object as argument, and
1432 returns a symbol identifying the type of that object--one of `symbol',
1433 `integer', `float', `string', `cons', `vector', `marker', `overlay',
1434 `window', `buffer', `subr', `compiled-function',
1435 `window-configuration', `process'.
1437 *** When you use eval-after-load for a file that is already loaded, it
1438 executes the FORM right away. As before, if the file is not yet
1439 loaded, it arranges to execute FORM if and when the file is loaded
1440 later. The result is: if you have called eval-after-load for a file,
1441 and if that file has been loaded, then regardless of the order of
1442 these two events, the specified form has been evaluated.
1444 *** The Lisp construct #@NUMBER now skips the next NUMBER characters,
1445 treating them as a comment.
1447 You would not want to use this in a file you edit by hand, but it is
1448 useful for commenting out parts of machine-generated files.
1450 *** Two new functions, `plist-get' and `plist-put',
1451 allow you to modify and retrieve values from lists formatted as property-lists.
1452 They work like `get' and `put', but operate on any list.
1453 `plist-put' returns the modified property-list; you must store it
1454 back where you got it.
1456 *** The new function add-to-list is called with two elements,
1457 a variable that holds a list and a new element.
1458 It adds the element to the list unless it is already present.
1459 It compares elements using `equal'. Here is an example:
1461 (setq foo '(a b)) => (a b)
1463 (add-to-list 'foo 'c) => (c a b)
1465 (add-to-list 'foo 'b) => (c a b)
1469 ** Changes in compilation.
1471 Functions and variables loaded from a byte-compiled file
1472 now refer to the file for their doc strings.
1474 This has a few consequences:
1476 -- Loading the file is faster and uses less memory.
1477 -- Reference to doc strings is a little slower (the same speed
1478 as reference to the doc strings of primitive and preloaded functions).
1479 -- The compiled files will not work in old versions of Emacs.
1480 -- If you move the compiled file after loading it, Emacs can no longer
1481 find these doc strings.
1482 -- If you alter the compiled file (such as by compiling a new
1483 version), then further access to documentation strings will get
1486 The byte compiler now optionally supports lazy loading of compiled
1487 functions' definitions. If you enable this feature when you compile,
1488 loading the compiled file does not actually bring the function
1489 definitions into core. Instead it creates references to the compiled
1490 file, and brings each function's definition into core the first time
1491 you call that function, or when you force it with the new function
1494 Using the lazy loading feature has a few consequences:
1496 -- Loading the file is faster and uses less memory.
1497 -- Calling any function in the file for the first time is slower.
1498 -- If you move the compiled file after loading it, Emacs can no longer
1499 find the function definitions.
1500 -- If you alter the compiled file (such as by compiling a new
1501 version), then further access to functions not already loaded
1502 will get nonsense results.
1504 To enable the lazy loading feature, set up a non-nil file local
1505 variable binding for the variable `byte-compile-dynamic' in the Lisp
1506 source file. For example, put this on the first line:
1508 -*-byte-compile-dynamic: t;-*-
1510 It's a good idea to use the lazy loading feature for a file that
1511 contains many functions, most of which are not actually used by a
1512 given user in a given session.
1514 To turn off the basic feature of referring to the file for doc
1515 strings, set byte-compile-dynamic-docstrings to nil. You can do this
1516 globally, or for one source file by adding this to the first line:
1518 -*-byte-compile-dynamic-docstrings: nil;-*-
1522 *** Do not pass integer arguments to `concat' (or `vconcat' or
1523 `append'). We are phasing out the old unrecommended support for
1524 integers as arguments to these functions, in preparation for treating
1525 numbers as single characters in a future release. To concatenate
1526 numbers in string form, use `number-to-string' first, or rewrite the
1527 call to use `format' instead of `concat'.
1529 *** The new function match-string returns the string of text matched at
1530 the given parenthesized expression by the last regexp search, or nil
1531 if there was no match. If the last match was by `string-match' on a
1532 string, the string must be given. Therefore, this function can be
1533 used in place of `buffer-substring' and `substring', when using
1534 `match-beginning' and `match-end' to find match positions.
1536 (match-string N) or (match-string N STRING)
1538 *** The function replace-match now accepts an optional fourth argument,
1539 STRING. Use this after performing string-match on STRING, to replace
1540 the portion of STRING that was matched. When used in this way,
1541 replace-match returns a newly created string which is the same as
1542 STRING except for the matched portion.
1544 *** The new function buffer-substring-no-properties
1545 is like buffer-substring except that the string it returns
1546 has no text properties.
1548 *** The function `equal' now considers two strings to be different
1549 if they don't have the same text properties.
1553 *** all-completions now takes an optional fourth argument.
1554 If that argument is non-nil, completions that start with a space
1555 are ignored unless the initial string also starts with a space.
1556 (This used to happen unconditionally.)
1560 *** Local hook variables.
1562 There is now a clean way to give a hook variable a buffer-local value.
1563 Call the function `make-local-hook' to do this.
1565 Once a hook variable is buffer-local, you can add hooks to it either
1566 globally or locally. run-hooks runs the local hook functions
1567 of the current buffer, then all the global hook functions.
1569 The functions add-hook and remove-hook take an additional optional
1570 argument LOCAL which says whether to add (or remove) a local hook
1571 function or a global one.
1573 Local hooks use t as an element of the (local) value of the hook
1574 variable as a flag meaning to use the global value also.
1576 *** The new function local-variable-p tells you whether a particular
1577 variable is buffer-local in the current buffer or a specified buffer.
1579 ** Editing Facilities
1581 *** The function copy-region-as-kill no longer sets this-command;
1582 as a result, a following kill command will not normally append
1583 to the text saved by copy-region-as-kill.
1585 *** Regular expression searching and matching no longer performs full
1586 Posix backtracking by default. They now stop with the first match found
1587 instead of looking for the longest match--just as they did in Emacs 18.
1588 The reason for this change is to get higher speed.
1590 There are new functions you can use if you really want to search or
1591 match with Posix behavior: posix-search-forward,
1592 posix-search-backward, posix-looking-at, and posix-string-match. Call
1593 these just like re-search-forward, re-search-backward, looking-at, and
1598 *** The new variable `format-alist' defines file formats,
1599 which are ways of translating between the data in a file and things
1600 (text, text-properties, and possibly other information) in a buffer.
1602 `format-alist' has one element for each format. Each element is a
1604 (NAME DOC-STRING REGEXP FROM-FN TO-FN MODIFY MODE-FN)
1605 containing the name of the format, a documentation string, a regular
1606 expression which is used to recognize files in that format, a decoding
1607 function, an encoding function, a flag that indicates whether the
1608 encoding function modifies the buffer, and a mode function.
1610 FROM-FN is called to decode files in that format; it gets two args, BEGIN
1611 and END, and can make any modifications it likes, returning the new
1612 end position. It must make sure that the beginning of the file no
1613 longer matches REGEXP, or else it will get called again.
1614 TO-FN is called to encode a region into that format; it is also passed BEGIN
1615 and END, and either returns a list of annotations as in
1616 `write-region-annotate-functions', or modifies the region and returns
1617 the new end position.
1618 MODIFY, if non-nil, means the TO-FN modifies the region. If nil, TO-FN may
1619 not make any changes and should return a list of annotations.
1621 `insert-file-contents' checks the beginning of the file that it is
1622 inserting to see if it matches one of the regexps. If so, then it
1623 calls the decoding function, and then looks for another match. When
1624 visiting a file, it also calls the mode function, and sets the
1625 variable `buffer-file-format' to the list of formats that the file
1628 `write-region' calls the encoding functions for each format in
1629 `buffer-file-format' before it writes the file. To save a file in a
1630 different format, either set `buffer-file-format' to a different
1631 value, or call the new function `format-write-file'.
1633 Since some encoding functions may be slow, you can request that
1634 auto-save use a format different from the buffer's default by setting
1635 the variable `auto-save-file-format' to the desired format. This will
1636 determine the format of all auto-save files.
1638 *** The new function file-ownership-preserved-p tells you whether
1639 deleting a file and recreating it would keep the file's owner
1642 *** The new function file-regular-p returns t if a file
1643 is a "regular" file (not a directory, symlink, named pipe,
1644 terminal, or other I/O device).
1646 *** The new function file-name-sans-extension discards the extension
1647 of a file name. You call it with a file name, and returns a string
1648 lacking the extension.
1650 *** The variable path-separator is a string which says which
1651 character separates directories in a search path. It is ":"
1652 for Unix and GNU systems, ";" for MSDOG and Windows NT.
1654 ** Commands and Key Sequences
1656 *** Key sequences consisting of C-c followed by {, }, <, >, : or ; are
1657 now reserved for major modes. Sequences consisting of C-c followed by
1658 any other punctuation character are now meant for minor modes. We don't
1659 plan to convert all existing major modes to stop using those sequences,
1660 but we hope to keep them to a minimum.
1662 *** When the post-command-hook or the pre-command-hook gets an error, the error
1663 is silently ignored. Emacs no longer sets the hook variable to nil when this
1664 happens. Meanwhile, the hook functions can now alter the hook variable in
1665 a normal fashion; there is no need to do anything special.
1667 *** define-key, lookup-key, and various other functions for changing or
1668 looking up key bindings now let you write an event type with a list
1669 like (ctrl meta newline) or (meta ?d), as in XEmacs. (ctrl meta newline)
1670 is equivalent to the event type symbol C-M-newline, and (meta ?d)
1671 is equivalent to the character ?\M-d.
1673 *** The function event-convert-list converts a list such as
1674 (meta ?d) into the corresponding event type (a symbol or integer).
1676 *** In an interactive spec, `k' means to read a key sequence. In this
1677 key sequence, upper case characters and shifted function keys which
1678 have no bindings are converted to lower case if that makes them
1681 The new interactive code `K' reads a key sequence similarly, but does
1682 not convert the last event. `K' is useful for reading a key sequence
1683 to be given a binding.
1685 *** The variable overriding-local-map now has no effect on the menu bar
1686 display unless overriding-local-map-menu-flag is non-nil. This is why
1687 incremental search no longer temporarily changes the menu bars.
1689 Note that overriding-local-map does still affect the execution of key
1690 sequences entered using the menu bar. So if you use
1691 overriding-local-map, and a menu bar key sequence comes in, you should
1692 make sure to clear overriding-local-map before that key sequence gets
1693 looked up and executed. But this is what you'd normally do anyway:
1694 programs that use overriding-local-map normally exit and "put back"
1695 any event such as menu-bar that they do not handle specially.
1697 *** The new variable `overriding-terminal-local-map' is like
1698 overriding-local-map, but is specific to a single terminal.
1700 *** delete-frame events.
1702 When you use the X window manager's "delete window" command, this now
1703 generates a delete-frame event. The standard definition of this event
1704 is a command that deletes the frame that received the event, and kills
1705 Emacs when the last visible or iconified frame is deleted. You can
1706 rebind the event to some other command if you wish.
1708 *** Two new types of events, iconify-frame and make-frame-visible,
1709 indicate that the user iconified or deiconified a frame with the
1710 window manager. Since the window manager has already done the work,
1711 the default definition for both event types in Emacs is to do nothing.
1715 *** Certain Lisp variables are now local to an X terminal (in other
1716 words, all the screens of a single X server). The value in effect, at
1717 any given time, is the one that belongs to the terminal of the
1718 selected frame. The terminal-local variables are
1719 default-minibuffer-frame, system-key-alist, defining-kbd-macro, and
1720 last-kbd-macro. There is no way for Lisp programs to create others.
1722 The terminal-local variables cannot be buffer-local.
1724 *** When you create an X frame, for the `top' and `left' frame
1725 parameters, you can now use values of the form (+ N) or (- N), where N
1726 is an integer. (+ N) means N pixels to the right of the left edge of
1727 the screen and (- N) means N pixels to the left of the right edge. In
1728 both cases, N may be zero (exactly at the edge) or negative (putting
1729 the window partly off the screen).
1731 The function x-parse-geometry can return values of these forms
1734 *** The variable menu-bar-file-menu has been renamed to
1735 menu-bar-files-menu to match the actual item that appears in the menu.
1736 (All the other such variable names do match.)
1738 *** The new function active-minibuffer-window returns the minibuffer window
1739 currently active, or nil if none is now active.
1741 *** In the functions next-window, previous-window, next-frame,
1742 previous-frame, get-buffer-window, get-lru-window, get-largest-window
1743 and delete-windows-on, if you specify 0 for the last argument,
1744 it means to consider all visible and iconified frames.
1746 *** When you set a frame's cursor type with modify-frame-parameters,
1747 you can now specify (bar . INTEGER) as the cursor type. This stands
1748 for a bar cursor of width INTEGER.
1750 *** The new function facep returns t if its argument is a face name
1751 (or if it is a vector such as is used internally by the Lisp code
1752 to represent a face).
1754 *** Each frame can now have a buffer-predicate function,
1755 which is the `buffer-predicate' frame parameter.
1756 When `other-buffer' looks for an alternative buffer, it considers
1757 only the buffers that fit the selected frame's buffer predicate (if it
1758 has one). This is useful for applications that make their own frames.
1760 *** When you create an X frame, you can now specify the frame parameter
1761 `display'. This says which display to put the frame on. The value
1762 should be a display name--a string of the form
1763 "HOST:DPYNUMBER.SCREENNUMBER".
1765 The functions x-server-... and x-display-... now take an optional
1766 argument which specifies the display to ask about. You can use either
1767 a display name string or a frame. A value of nil stands for the
1770 To close the connection to an X display, use the function
1771 x-close-connection. Specify which display with a display name. You
1772 cannot close the connection if Emacs still has frames open on that
1775 x-display-list returns a list indicating which displays Emacs has
1776 connections to. Its elements are display names (strings).
1778 *** The icon-type frame parameter may now be a file name.
1779 Then the contents of that file specify the icon bitmap to use
1782 *** The title of an Emacs frame, displayed by most window managers, is
1783 set from frame-title-format or icon-title-format. These have the same
1784 structure as mode-line-format.
1786 *** x-display-grayscale-p is a new function that returns non-nil if
1787 your X server can display shades of gray. Currently it returns
1788 non-nil for color displays (because they can display shades of gray);
1789 we may change it in the next version to return nil for color displays.
1791 *** The frame parameter scroll-bar-width specifies the width of the
1792 scrollbar in pixels.
1796 *** Creating a buffer with get-buffer-create does not obey
1797 default-major-mode. That variable is now handled in a separate
1798 function, set-buffer-major-mode. get-buffer-create and generate-new-buffer
1799 always leave the newly created buffer in Fundamental mode.
1801 Creating a new buffer by visiting a file or with switch-to-buffer,
1802 pop-to-buffer, and similar functions does call set-buffer-major-mode
1803 to select the default major mode specified with default-major-mode.
1805 *** You can now create an "indirect buffer". An indirect buffer shares
1806 its text, including text properties, with another buffer (the "base
1807 buffer"), but has its own major mode, local variables, overlays, and
1808 narrowing. An indirect buffer has a name of its own, distinct from
1809 those of the base buffer and all other buffers. An indirect buffer
1810 cannot itself be visiting a file (though its base buffer can be).
1811 The base buffer cannot itself be indirect.
1813 Use (make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER NAME) to make an indirect buffer
1814 named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER. If BASE-BUFFER is an indirect
1815 buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new buffer.
1817 You can make an indirect buffer current, or switch to it in a window,
1818 just as you would a non-indirect buffer.
1820 The function buffer-base-buffer, given an indirect buffer, returns its
1821 base buffer. It returns nil when given an ordinary buffer (not
1824 The library `noutline' has versions of Outline mode and Outline minor
1825 mode which let you display different parts of the outline in different
1830 *** The functions call-process and call-process-region now allow
1831 you to direct error message output from the subprocess into a
1832 separate destination, instead of mixing it with ordinary output.
1833 To do this, specify for the third argument, BUFFER, a list of the form
1834 (BUFFER-OR-NAME ERROR-DESTINATION)
1835 BUFFER-OR-NAME specifies where to put ordinary output; it should
1836 be a buffer or buffer name, or t, nil or 0. This is what would
1837 have been the BUFFER argument, ordinarily.
1839 ERROR-DESTINATION specifies where to put the error output.
1840 nil means discard it, t means mix it with the ordinary output,
1841 and a string specifies a file name to write this output into.
1843 You can't specify a buffer to put the error output in; that is not
1844 easy to implement directly. You can put the error output into a
1845 buffer by sending it to a temporary file and then inserting the file
1848 *** Comint mode changes:
1850 **** The variable comint-completion-addsuffix can also be a cons pair
1851 of the form (DIRSUFFIX . FILESUFFIX), where DIRSUFFIX and FILESUFFIX are
1852 strings added on unambiguous or exact completion of directories and file
1853 names, respectively.
1857 *** You can now specify which values of the `invisible' property
1858 make text invisible in a given buffer. The variable
1859 `buffer-invisibility-spec', which is always local in all buffers,
1862 If its value is t, then any non-nil `invisible' property makes
1863 a character invisible.
1865 If its value is a list, then a character is invisible if its
1866 `invisible' property value appears as a member of the list, or if it
1867 appears as the car of a member of the list.
1869 When the `invisible' property value appears as the car of a member of
1870 the `buffer-invisibility-spec' list, then the cdr of that member has
1871 an effect. If it is non-nil, then an ellipsis appears in place of the
1872 character. (This happens only for the *last* invisible character in a
1873 series of consecutive invisible characters, and only at the end of a
1876 If a character's `invisible' property is a list, then Emacs checks each
1877 element of the list against `buffer-invisibility-spec'. If any element
1878 matches, the character is invisible.
1880 *** The command `list-text-properties-at' shows what text properties
1881 are in effect at point.
1883 *** Frame objects now exist in Emacs even on systems that don't support
1884 X Windows. You can create multiple frames, and switch between them
1885 using select-frame. The selected frame is actually displayed on your
1886 terminal; other frames are not displayed at all. The selected frame
1887 number appears in the mode line after `Emacs', except for frame 1.
1889 Switching frames on ASCII terminals is therefore more or less
1890 equivalent to switching between different window configurations.
1892 *** The new variable window-size-change-functions holds a list of
1893 functions to be called if window sizes change (or if windows are
1894 created or deleted). The functions are called once for each frame on
1895 which changes have occurred, with the frame as the sole argument.
1896 This takes place shortly before redisplay.
1898 *** The modification hook functions of overlays now work differently.
1899 They are called both before and after each change. This makes it
1900 possible for the functions to determine exactly what the change was.
1902 This change affects three overlay properties: the modification-hooks
1903 property, a list of functions called for deletions overlapping the
1904 overlay's range and for insertions inside it; the
1905 insert-in-front-hooks, a list of functions called for insertions at
1906 the beginning of the overlay; and the insert-behind-hooks, a list of
1907 functions called for insertions at the end of the overlay.
1909 Each function is called both before and after each change that it
1910 applies to. Before the change, it is called with four arguments:
1911 (funcall FUNCTION OVERLAY nil START END)
1912 START and END are the same arguments that the before-change-functions
1915 After the change, each function is called with five arguments:
1916 (funcall FUNCTION OVERLAY t START END OLDSIZE)
1917 The last arguments, START and END and OLDSIZE,
1918 are the same arguments that the after-change-functions receive.
1920 This means the function must accept either four or five arguments.
1922 *** You can set defaults for text-properties with the new variable
1923 `default-text-properties'. Its value is a property list; the values
1924 specified there are used whenever a character (or its category) does
1925 not specify a value.
1927 *** The `face' property of a character or an overlay can now be a list
1928 of face names. Formerly it had to be just one face name.
1930 *** Changes in handling the `intangible' text property.
1932 **** If inhibit-point-motion-hooks is non-nil, then `intangible' properties
1935 **** Moving to just before a stretch of intangible text
1936 is no longer special in any way. Point stays at that place.
1938 **** When you move point backwards into the midst of intangible text,
1939 point moves back to the beginning of that text. (It used to move
1940 forward to the end of that text, which was not very useful.)
1942 **** When moving across intangible text, Emacs stops wherever the
1943 property value changes. So if you have two stretches of intangible
1944 text, with different non-nil intangible properties, it is possible to
1945 place point between them.
1949 *** Overlay changes.
1951 **** The new function previous-overlay-change returns the position of
1952 the previous overlay start or end, before a specified position. This
1953 is the backwards-moving counterpart of next-overlay-change.
1955 **** overlay-get now supports category properties on an overlay
1956 the same way get-text-property supports them as text properties.
1958 Specifically, if an overlay does not have the property PROP that you
1959 ask for, but it does have a `category' property which is a symbol,
1960 then that symbol's PROP property is used.
1962 **** If an overlay has a non-nil `evaporate' property, it will be
1963 deleted if it ever becomes empty (i.e., when it spans no characters).
1965 **** If an overlay has a `before-string' and/or `after-string' property,
1966 these strings are displayed at the overlay's endpoints.
1970 *** The new variable fill-paragraph-function provides a way for major
1971 modes to override the filling of paragraphs. If this is non-nil,
1972 fill-paragraph calls it as a function, passing along its sole
1973 argument. If the function returns non-nil, fill-paragraph assumes it
1974 has done the job and simply passes on whatever value it returned.
1976 The usual use of this feature is to fill comments in programming
1979 *** Text filling and justification changes:
1981 **** The new variable use-hard-newlines can be used to make a
1982 distinction between "hard" and "soft" newlines; the fill functions
1983 will then never remove a newline that was manually inserted. Hard
1984 newlines are marked with a non-nil `hard' text-property.
1986 **** The fill-column and left-margin can now be modified by text-properties.
1987 Most lisp programs should use the new functions (current-fill-column) and
1988 (current-left-margin), which return the proper values to use for the
1991 **** There are new functions for dealing with margins:
1993 ***** Set-left-margin and set-right-margin (set the value for a region
1994 and re-fill). These functions take three arguments: two to specify
1995 a region, and the desired margin value.
1997 ***** Increase-left-margin, decrease-left-margin, increase-right-margin, and
1998 decrease-right-margin (change settings relative to current values, and
2001 ***** move-to-left-margin moves point there, optionally adding
2002 indentation or changing tabs to spaces in order to make that possible.
2003 beginning-of-line-text also moves past the fill-prefix and any
2004 indentation added to center or right-justify a line, to the beginning
2005 of the text that the user actually typed.
2007 ***** delete-to-left-margin removes any left-margin indentation, but
2008 does not change the property.
2010 **** The paragraph-movement functions look for the paragraph-start and
2011 paragraph-separate regexps at the current left margin, not at the
2012 beginning of the line. This means that those regexps should NOT use ^
2013 to anchor the search. However, for backwards compatibility, a ^ at
2014 the beginning of the regexp will be ignored, so most packages won't break.
2016 **** justify-current-line is now capable of doing left, center, or
2017 right justification as well as full justification.
2019 **** The fill functions can do any kind of justification based on the new
2020 `justification' text-property and `default-justification' variable,
2021 or arguments to the functions. They also have a new option which
2022 defeats the normal removal of extra whitespace.
2024 **** The new function `current-justification' returns the kind of
2025 justification used for the current line. The new function
2026 `set-justification' can be used to change it, including re-justifying
2027 the text of the region according to the new value.
2029 **** Filling and auto-fill are disabled if justification is `none'.
2031 **** The auto-fill-function is now called regardless of whether
2032 the fill-column has been exceeded; the function can determine on its
2033 own whether filling (or justification) is necessary.
2037 *** process-tty-name is a new function that returns the name of the
2038 terminal that the process itself reads and writes on (not the name of
2039 the pty that Emacs uses to talk with that terminal).
2041 *** Errors in process filters and sentinels are now normally caught
2042 automatically, so that they don't abort other Lisp programs.
2044 Setting debug-on-error non-nil turns off this feature; then errors in
2045 filters and sentinels are not caught. As a result, they can invoke
2046 the debugger, under the control of debug-on-error.
2048 *** Emacs now preserves the match data around the execution of process
2049 filters and sentinels. You can use search and match functions freely
2050 in filters and sentinels without explicitly bothering to save the
2055 *** The variable message-log-max controls how messages are logged in the
2056 "*Messages*" buffer. An integer value means to keep that many lines;
2057 t means to log with no limit; nil means disable message logging. Lisp
2058 code that calls `message' excessively (e.g. isearch.el) should probably
2059 bind this variable to nil.
2061 *** Display tables now have a new element, at index 261, specifying the
2062 glyph to use for the separator between two side-by-side windows. By
2063 default, this is the vertical bar character `|'. Probably the only
2064 other useful character to store for this element is a space, to make
2065 less visual separation between two side-by-side windows displaying
2066 related information.
2068 *** The new mode-line-format spec %c displays the current column number.
2070 *** The new variable blink-matching-delay specifies how long to keep
2071 the cursor at the matching open-paren, after you insert a close-paren.
2072 This is useful mainly on systems which can wait for a fraction of a
2073 second--you can then specify fractional values such as 0.5.
2075 *** Faster processing of buffers with long lines
2077 The new variable cache-long-line-scans determines whether Emacs
2078 should use caches to handle long lines more quickly. This variable is
2079 buffer-local, in all buffers.
2081 Normally, the line-motion functions work by scanning the buffer for
2082 newlines. Columnar operations (like `move-to-column' and
2083 `compute-motion') also work by scanning the buffer, summing character
2084 widths as they go. This works well for ordinary text, but if the
2085 buffer's lines are very long (say, more than 500 characters), these
2086 motion functions will take longer to execute. Emacs may also take
2087 longer to update the display.
2089 If cache-long-line-scans is non-nil, these motion functions cache
2090 the results of their scans, and consult the cache to avoid rescanning
2091 regions of the buffer until the text is modified. The caches are most
2092 beneficial when they prevent the most searching---that is, when the
2093 buffer contains long lines and large regions of characters with the
2094 same, fixed screen width.
2096 When cache-long-line-scans is non-nil, processing short lines will
2097 become slightly slower (because of the overhead of consulting the
2098 cache), and the caches will use memory roughly proportional to the
2099 number of newlines and characters whose screen width varies.
2101 The caches require no explicit maintenance; their accuracy is
2102 maintained internally by the Emacs primitives. Enabling or disabling
2103 the cache should not affect the behavior of any of the motion functions;
2104 it should only affect their performance.
2108 *** The function user-login-name now accepts an optional
2109 argument uid. If the argument is non-nil, user-login-name
2110 returns the login name for that user id.
2112 *** system-name, user-name, user-full-name and user-real-name are now
2113 variables as well as functions. The variables hold the same values
2114 that the functions would return. The new variable multiple-frames
2115 is non-nil if at least two non-minibuffer frames are visible. These
2116 variables may be useful in constructing the value of frame-title-format
2117 or icon-title-format.
2119 *** Changes in time-conversion functions.
2121 **** The new function format-time-string takes a format string and a
2122 time value. It converts the time to a string, according to the format
2123 specified. You can specify what kind of conversion to use with
2126 **** The new function decode-time converts a time value into a list of
2127 specific items of information: the year, month, day of week, day of
2128 month, hour, minute and second. (A time value is a list of two or
2131 **** The new function encode-time converts specific items of time
2132 information--the second, minute, hour, day, month, year, and time
2133 zone--into a time value.
2135 * Changes in Emacs 19.27
2137 There are no changes; however, here is one bug fix made in 19.26 that users
2138 think should be documented here.
2140 ** SPC and DEL in Info now handle menus consistently.
2142 SPC and DEL scroll through an entire subtree an Info manual. Once you
2143 scroll through a node far enough to reach a menu, SPC begins moving
2144 into the subnodes of the menu, starting with the first one. When you
2145 reach the end of a subnode, SPC moves into the next subnode, and so
2148 DEL more or less scrolls through the same text in reverse order.
2150 * User Editing Changes in Emacs 19.26
2152 ** In the X toolkit version, if you click on a menu bar item and
2153 release the button quickly outside the menu, the menu remains visible
2154 until you click or type something else. If you click on the menu, you
2155 select from the menu. Any other mouse click makes the menu disappear.
2156 Keyboard input gets rid of the menu and then is processed normally.
2158 "Quickly" means within double-click-time milliseconds.
2160 ** The C-x 5 commands to select a buffer in "another frame" now use an
2161 existing iconified frame, if any, deiconifying it. They also raise
2164 ** Region highlighting on a black-and-white-only display now uses
2165 underlining. Inverse-video had the problem that you couldn't see
2168 ** You can now change the height of a window by pressing mouse-1 on
2169 the mode line and dragging it up and down.
2171 ** If you set the environment variable LC_CTYPE to iso_8859_1 or
2172 iso-8859-1, Emacs automatically sets up for display and syntactic
2173 handling of the ISO Latin-1 character set.
2175 This does not automatically load any of the packages for input of
2176 these characters, because it's not yet clear what is right to do.
2177 You must still explicitly load either iso-transl or iso-acc.
2179 ** For a read-only buffer that is also modified, the mode line now displays
2182 ** M-prior (scroll-other-window-down) is a new command that works like
2183 M-next (and C-M-v) but scrolls in the opposite direction.
2185 M-home moves to the beginning of the buffer, in the other window.
2186 M-end moves to the end of the buffer, in the other window. These two
2187 commands, along with M-next and M-prior, form a series of commands for
2188 moving around in the other window.
2190 ** In change logs, the mail address is now delimited with <...> instead
2193 This makes it a little more convenient to extract the mail address for
2194 use in mailing a message.
2196 ** In Shell mode and other comint modes, C-a has now returned to
2197 its ordinary meaning: move to the beginning of the line.
2198 Use C-c C-a to move to the end of the prompt.
2200 ** If you set mail-signature to t to cause automatic insertion of
2201 your .signature file, you now get a -- before the signature.
2203 ** Setting rmail-highlighted-headers to nil entirely turns off
2204 highlighting in Rmail. However, if your motivation for doing this is
2205 that the highlighted text doesn't look good on your display, it might
2206 be better to change the appearance of the `highlight' face. Once
2207 you've done that, you may find Rmail highlighting is useful.
2209 ** In the calendar, mouse-2 is now used only for commands that apply to a date.
2210 If you click it when not on a date, it gives an immediate error.
2212 Mouse-3 in the calendar now gives a menu of commands that do not apply
2213 to a particular date.
2215 The D command displays diary entries from a specified diary file (not
2216 your standard diary file).
2218 ** In the gnus-uu package, the binding for gnus-uu-threaded-decode-and-view
2219 is now C-c C-v C-d, not C-c C-v C-h. Thus, C-c C-v C-h is now available
2220 for asking for a list of the subcommands of C-c C-v.
2222 ** You can now specify "who you are" for various Emacs packages by
2223 setting just one variable, user-mail-address. This currently applies
2224 to posting news with GNUS and to making change log entries. It may
2225 apply to additional Emacs features in the future.
2227 * Lisp-Level Changes in Emacs 19.26:
2229 ** The function insert-char now takes an optional third argument
2230 which, if non-nil, says the inserted characters should inherit sticky
2231 text properties from the surrounding text.
2233 ** The `diary' library has been renamed to `diary-lib'. If you refer
2234 to this library in your Lisp code, you must update the references.
2236 ** Sending text to a subprocess can read input from subprocesses if it
2237 has to wait because the destination subprocess's terminal input buffer
2240 It was already possible in unusual occasions for this operation to
2241 read subprocess input, but it did not happen very often. It is now
2242 more likely to happen.
2244 ** last-nonmenu-event is now bound to t around filter functions and sentinels.
2245 This is to ensure that y-or-n-p and yes-or-no-p use the keyboard by default.
2247 ** In mode lines, %+ now displays as % for unmodified read-only
2248 buffers. It is now the same as %* except in the case of a modified
2249 read-only buffer; in that case, %+ displays as *.
2251 The old meaning of %+ is now available on %&.
2252 It displays * for a modified buffer and - for an unmodified buffer,
2253 regardless of read-only status.
2255 ** You can now use `underline' in the color list of a face.
2256 It serves as a last resort, and says to underline the face
2257 (if previous color list elements can't be used).
2259 ** The new function x-color-values returns the list of color values
2260 for a given color name (a string). The list contains three integers
2261 which give the amounts of red, green and blue in the color: (R G B).
2263 ** In run-at-time, 0 as the repeat interval means "don't repeat".
2265 ** The variable trim-versions-without-asking has been renamed to
2266 delete-old-versions.
2268 ** The new function other-window-for-scrolling returns the choice of
2269 other window for C-M-v to scroll.
2271 ** Note that the function fceiling was mistakenly documented as fceil before.
2273 * Changes in cc-mode.el in Emacs 19.26:
2275 ** A new syntactic symbol has been added: substatement-open. It
2276 defines the open brace of a substatement block. These used to get:
2277 ((block-open ...) (substatement . ...)).
2279 Non-block substatement lines still get just ((substatement . ...))
2281 Note that the custom indent function c-adaptive-block-open has been
2282 removed as obsolete.
2284 ** You can now specify the `hanginess' of closing braces. See
2285 c-hanging-braces-alist.
2287 ** Recognizes try and catch blocks in C++. They are given the
2288 substatement syntactic symbol.
2290 ** should be generally more forgiving about non-GNU standard top-level
2291 construct definition styles (i.e. where the function/class/struct
2292 opening brace does not start in column zero).
2294 If you hang the braces that open a top-level construct on the right
2295 edge, and you find you still need to define defun-open-prompt (Emacs
2296 19) please let me know. Note that there may still be performance
2297 issues related to non-column zero opening braces.
2299 ** c-macro-expand is put on C-c C-e
2301 ** New style: "Default". Resets indentation to those shipped with
2304 ** internal defun c-indent-via-language-element has been renamed
2305 c-indent-line for compatibility with c-mode.el and awk-mode.
2307 ** new buffer-local variable c-comment-start-regexp for (potential)
2308 flexibility in adding new modes based on cc-mode.el
2310 * Changes in Emacs 19.25
2312 The variable x-cross-pointer-shape (which didn't really exist) has
2313 been renamed to x-sensitive-text-pointer-shape, and now does exist.
2315 * Changes in Emacs 19.24
2317 Here is a list of new Lisp packages introduced since 19.22.
2319 derived.el Define new major modes based on old ones.
2320 dired-x.el Extra Dired features.
2321 double.el New mode for conveniently inputting non-beyond chars.
2322 easymenu.el Create menus easily.
2323 ediff.el Snazzy diff interface.
2324 foldout.el A kind of outline mode designed for editing programs.
2325 gnus-uu.el UUdecode in GNUS buffers.
2326 ielm.el Interactively evaluate Lisp.
2327 This is a replacement for Lisp Interaction Mode.
2328 iso-cvt.el Conversion of beyond-ASCII characters between
2329 various different representations.
2330 jka-compr.el Automatic compression/decompression.
2331 mldrag.el Drag modeline to change heights of windows.
2332 mail-hist.el Provides history for headers of outgoing mail.
2333 rsz-mini.el Automatically resizing minibuffers.
2334 s-region.el Set region by holding shift.
2335 skeleton.el Templates for statement insertion.
2336 soundex.el Classifying words by how they sound.
2337 tempo.el Template insertion with hotspots.
2339 * User Editing Changes in 19.23.
2341 ** Emacs 19.23 uses Ispell version 3.
2343 Previous Emacs 19 versions used Ispell version 4. That version had
2344 improvements in storing the dictionary compactly, but these are not
2345 very important nowadays. Meanwhile, in parallel to the work on Ispell
2346 4, many useful features were added to Ispell 3. Until a few months
2347 ago, the terms on Ispell 3 did not let us use it; but they have now
2348 been changed, so now we are using it. We are dropping Ispell 4.
2350 ** Emacs 19.23 can run on MS-DOG. See the file MSDOS in the same
2351 directory as this file.
2353 ** Emacs 19.23 can work with an X toolkit. You must specify toolkit
2354 operation when you configure Emacs: use the option
2355 --with-x-toolkit=yes. (This option uses code developed by Lucid;
2356 thanks to Frederic Pierresteguy for helping to adapt it.)
2358 ** Emacs now has dialog boxes; yes/no and y/n questions automatically
2359 use them in commands invoked with the mouse. For more information,
2360 see below under "Lisp programming changes".
2362 ** Menus now display the keyboard equivalents (if any) of the menu
2363 commands in parentheses after the menu item.
2365 ** Kill commands, used in a read-only buffer, now move point across
2366 the text they would otherwise have killed. This way, you can use
2367 repeated kill commands to transfer text into the kill ring.
2369 ** There is now a global mark ring in addition to the mark ring that is local
2370 to each buffer. The global mark ring stores positions in any buffer. Any
2371 time the mark is set and the current buffer is different from the last time
2372 the mark was set, the new mark is pushed on the global mark ring as well.
2373 The new command C-x C-SPC (pop-global-mark) pops the global mark ring and
2374 jumps to the last mark pushed, first switching to that buffer.
2376 ** Query Replace is now available in the Edit menu.
2378 ** ESC no longer simply exits a Query Replace. It now exits the Query
2379 Replace and remains pending. Thus, ESC A and M-A are now equivalent
2382 To simply exit a Query Replace, type RET or Period.
2384 ** M-mouse-2 now puts point at the end of the yanked secondary selection.
2386 ** Mouse-1 in the mode line now simply selects the window above that
2387 mode line. Mouse-2 in the mode line selects that window and expands
2388 it to fill the frame it is in.
2390 ** You can now use mouse-2 in a Dired buffer or Tar mode buffer to find
2391 a file you click on, in a compilation buffer to go to a particular
2392 error message, and in a *Occur* buffer to go to a particular
2395 (It was already possible to do likewise in Info and in completion list
2398 What's more, the sensitive areas of the buffer now highlight when you
2399 move the mouse over them.
2401 ** In a completion list buffer, the command RET now chooses the completion
2402 that is around or next to point.
2404 ** If you specify the foreground color for the `mode-line' face, and
2405 mode-line-inverse-video is non-nil, then the default background color
2406 is the usual foreground color.
2408 ** revert-buffer now preserves markers pointing within the unchanged
2409 text (if any) at the beginning and end of the file.
2411 ** Version control checkin and checkout preserve all markers if the
2412 file does not contain any of the magic version header sequences that
2413 are updated automatically by RCS and SCCS. If such version headers
2414 are present, checkin and checkout preserve a marker unless it comes
2415 between two such sequences. (So it's a good idea to put all the
2416 header sequences close together.)
2418 ** When a large deletion shuts off auto save temporarily in a buffer,
2419 you can now turn it on again by saving the buffer with C-x C-s (as was
2420 possible in Emacs 18). You can also turn it on again with M-1 M-x
2421 auto-save (as has been possible in Emacs 19).
2423 ** C-x r d now runs the command delete-rectangle.
2425 ** The new command imenu shows you a menu of interesting places in the
2426 current buffer and lets you select one; then it moves point there.
2427 The definition of interesting places depends on the major mode, but
2428 typically this includes function definitions and such. Normally,
2429 imenu displays the menu in a buffer; but if you bind it to a mouse
2430 event, it shows a mouse popup menu.
2432 ** You can make certain chosen buffers, that normally appear in a
2433 separate window, appear in special frames of their own. To do this,
2434 set special-display-buffer-names to a list of buffer names; any buffer
2435 whose name is in that list automatically gets a special frame when it
2436 is to be displayed in another window.
2438 A good value to try is ("*compilation*" "*grep*" "*TeX Shell*").
2440 More generally, you can set special-display-regexps to a list of regular
2441 expressions; then each buffer whose name matches any of those regular
2442 expressions gets its own frame.
2444 The variable special-display-frame-alist specifies the frame
2445 parameters for these frames. It has a default value, so you don't
2448 ** If you set sentence-end-double-space to nil, the fill commands
2449 expect just one space at the end of a sentence. (If you want the
2450 sentence commands to accept single spaces, you must modify the regexp
2453 ** You can suppress the startup echo area message by adding text like
2454 this to your .emacs file:
2456 (setq inhibit-startup-echo-area-message "YOUR-LOGIN-NAME")
2458 Simply setting inhibit-startup-echo-area-message to your login name is
2459 not sufficient to inhibit the message; Emacs explicitly checks whether
2460 .emacs contains an expression as shown above. Your login name must
2461 appear in the expression as a Lisp string constant.
2463 This way, you can easily inhibit the message for yourself if you wish,
2464 but thoughtless copying of your .emacs file will not inhibit the
2465 message for someone else.
2467 ** Outline minor mode now uses C-c C-o as a prefix instead of just C-c.
2469 ** In Outline mode, hide-subtree is now C-c C-d. (It was C-c C-h; but
2470 that is now a conventional way to ask for help about C-c commands.)
2472 ** There are two additional commands in Outline mode.
2474 hides all headers except the topmost N levels.
2476 hides everything about the body that point is in
2477 plus the headers leading up from there to the top of the tree.
2479 ** In iso-transl and iso-insert, the sequences for entering A-ring and
2480 the AE ligature are now just A and E (plus the initial C-x 8 or Alt).
2481 You used to have to enter AA or AE, after the C-x 8 prefix of course.
2482 Likewise for lower case a-ring and ae.
2484 ** iso-transl now defines convenient Alt keys as well as the C-x 8 prefix.
2485 Instead of prefixing a sequence with C-x 8, you can add Alt to the
2486 first character of the sequence. For example, Alt-" a is now a way
2487 to enter an a-umlaut.
2489 ** CC mode is a greatly improved mode for C and C++.
2490 See the following page.
2492 ** tcl mode is a new major mode. It provides features for
2493 editing, indenting and running tcl programs.
2495 ** Compilation minor mode lets you parse error messages in any buffer,
2496 not just a normal compilation output buffer. Type M-x
2497 compilation-minor-mode to enable the minor mode; then C-c C-c jumps to
2498 the source location for the error at point, as in the `*compilation*'
2499 buffer. If you use compilation-minor-mode in an Rlogin buffer, it
2500 automatically accesses remote source files by ftp.
2502 ** Comint and shell mode changes:
2504 *** Comint modes (including Shell mode, GUD modes, etc.) now bind
2505 C-M-l to the command comint-show-output. This command scrolls the
2506 buffer to show the last batch of output from the subprogram.
2508 *** Completion in Comint modes now truly operates on the string before
2509 point, rather than the word that point is within.
2511 *** Comint mode file name completion ignores those files that end with a
2512 string in the new variable comint-completion-fignore. This variable's
2513 default value is nil.
2515 *** Shell mode uses the variable shell-completion-fignore to set
2516 comint-completion-fignore. The default value is nil, but some
2517 people prefer ("~" "#" "%").
2519 *** The function `comint-watch-for-password-prompt' can be used to
2520 suppress echoing when a subprocess asks for a password. To use it,
2523 (add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
2524 'comint-watch-for-password-prompt)
2526 *** You can use M-x shell-strip-ctrl-m to strip ^M characters from
2529 *** In Shell mode, TAB now completes environment variables, if possible,
2530 and expands directory references.
2532 *** You can use M-x comint-run to execute any program of your choice in
2533 a comint mode. Some programs such as shells, rlogin, and debuggers
2534 have their own specialized modes; this command is one way to use
2535 comint to run programs for which no such specialized mode exits. (You
2536 can also run a shell with M-x shell and run the program of your choice
2537 under the shell--but that gives you the specializations of Shell
2540 ** When you run GUD (M-x gdb, M-x dbx, and so on), you can use TAB
2541 to do file name completion in the minibuffer.
2543 The "Complete" menu includes an item for directory expansion.
2545 ** GUD working with future versions of GDB will permit TAB for
2546 GDB-style symbol completion. This will work with GDB 4.13.
2548 ** Rmail no longer gets new mail automatically when you visit an Rmail
2549 file specified by name--not even if it is your primary Rmail file. To
2550 get new mail, type `g'. This feature is an advantage because you now
2551 have a choice of whether to get new mail. (This change actually
2552 occurred in an earlier version, but wasn't listed here then, since it
2553 made the code do what the documentation already said.)
2555 ** Rmail now highlights certain fields automatically, when you use X
2556 windows. The variable rmail-highlighted-headers controls which
2559 ** If you set rmail-summary-window-size to an integer, Rmail uses
2560 a window that many lines high for the summary buffer.
2562 ** rmail-input-menu is a new command that visits an Rmail file letting
2563 you choose which file with a mouse menu. rmail-output-menu is
2564 similar; it outputs the current message, using a mouse menu to choose
2565 which Rmail file. These commands use the variables
2566 rmail-secondary-file-directory and rmail-secondary-file-regexp.
2568 ** The mh-e package has been changed substantially.
2569 See the file ./MH-E-NEWS for details.
2571 ** The calendar and diary have new features.
2573 The menu bar for the calendar contains most of the calendar commands,
2574 arranged into logical categories.
2576 Mouse-2 now performs specific-date-related commands when clicked on a
2577 date in the calendar window and common three-month-related commands
2578 when clicked elsewhere in the calendar window.
2580 You can set up colored/shaded highlighting of holidays, diary entry
2581 dates, and today's date, by setting calendar-holiday-marker,
2582 diary-entry-marker, and calendar-today-marker to a face instead of a
2583 character. Using a special face is now the default if you are using a
2586 ** The appt package for displaying appointment reminders has new
2589 *** The appt alarm window stays for the full duration of
2590 appt-display-duration. It no longer disappears when you start typing
2593 *** You can change the way the appointment window is created/deleted by
2594 setting the variables appt-disp-window-function and
2595 appt-delete-window-function.
2597 For instance, these variables can be set to functions that display
2598 appointments in pop-up frames, which are lowered or iconified after
2599 appt-display-duration seconds.
2601 ** desktop.el can now save a list of buffer-local variables,
2602 and saves more global ones.
2604 ** Pascal mode has been completely rewritten. It now features
2605 completing of function names, variables and type definitions around
2606 current point (like M-TAB does with lisp-symbols). There's also an
2607 outline mode (M-x pascal-outline) that hides the bodies of all
2608 functions you're not working with.
2610 ** Edebug has a number of changes:
2612 *** Edebug syntax error reporting is improved.
2614 *** Top-level forms and defining forms other than defun and defmacro may
2615 now be debugged with Edebug.
2617 *** Edebug specifications may now contain body, &define, name, arg or
2618 arglist, def-body, and def-form, to support definitions.
2620 *** edebug-all-defuns is renamed to edebug-all-defs.
2621 def-edebug-form-spec is replaced by def-edebug-form whose arguments
2622 are unevaluated. The old names are still available for now.
2624 *** Frequency counts and coverage data may be displayed for functions being
2627 *** A global break condition is now checked at every stop point.
2629 *** The previous condition at a breakpoint may now be edited.
2631 *** A new "next" mode stops only after expression evaluation.
2633 *** A new command, top-level-nonstop, does not even stop for unwind-protect,
2636 * Changes in CC mode in Emacs 19.23.
2638 `cc-mode' provides ANSI C, K&R C, and ARM C++ language editing. It
2639 represents the merge of c++-mode.el and c-mode.el. cc-mode provides a
2640 new, more flexible indentation engine so that indentation
2641 customization is more intuitive. There are two steps to calculating
2642 indentation: first, CC mode analyzes the line for syntactic content,
2643 then based on this content it applies user defined offsets and adds
2644 this offset to the indentation of some previous line.
2646 The syntactic analysis determines if the line describes a `statement',
2647 `substatement', `class-open', `member-init-intro', etc. These are
2648 described in detail with C-h v c-offsets-alist. You can change the
2649 offsets interactively with C-c C-o (c-set-offsets), or
2650 programmatically in your c-mode-common-hook, which is run both by
2651 c-mode and c++-mode. You can also set up "styles" in the same way
2652 that you could with c-mode.el. The variable c-basic-offset controls
2653 the basic offset given to a level of indentation.
2655 If, for example, you wanted to change this style:
2661 printf ("its a foo\n");
2664 printf ("don't know what it is\n");
2675 printf ("its a foo\n");
2678 printf ("don't know what it is\n");
2683 you could add the following to your .emacs file:
2685 (defun my-c-mode-common-hook ()
2686 (c-set-offset 'case-label 2)
2687 (c-set-offset 'statement-case-intro 2))
2688 (add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook 'my-c-mode-common-hook)
2692 c-offsets-alist contains an association list of syntactic symbols and
2693 their relative offsets. Do a "C-h v c-offsets-alist" to get a list of
2694 all syntactic symbols currently defined, and their meanings. You
2695 should not change this variable directly; use the supplied interface
2696 commands c-set-offset and c-set-style.
2698 c-mode-common-hook is run by both c-mode and c++-mode during their
2699 common initializations. You should put any customizations that are
2700 the same for both C and C++ into this hook.
2702 The variable c-strict-semantics-p is used mainly for debugging. When
2703 non-nil, CC mode signals an error if it returns a syntactic symbol
2704 that can't be found in c-offsets-alist.
2706 If you want CC mode to echo the syntactic analysis for a particular
2707 line when you hit the TAB key, set c-echo-semantic-information-p to
2710 c-basic-offset controls the standard amount of offset for a level of
2711 indentation. You can set a syntactic symbol's offset to + or - as a
2712 short-hand for positive or negative c-basic-offset.
2714 c-comment-only-line-offset lets you control indentation given to lines
2715 which contain only a comment, in the case of C++ line style comments,
2716 or the introduction to a C block comment. Comment-only lines at
2717 column zero can be anchored there independent of the indentation given
2718 to other comment-only lines.
2720 c-block-comments-indent-p controls the style of C block comment
2721 re-indentation. If you put leading stars in front of comment
2722 continuation lines, you should set this variable to nil.
2724 c-cleanup-list is a list describing certain C and C++ constructs to be
2725 "cleaned up" as they are typed, but only when the auto-newline feature
2726 is turned on. In C++, make sure this variable contains at least
2727 'scope-operator so that double colons will not be separated by a
2730 Colons (`:') and braces (`{` and `}') are special in C and C++. For
2731 certain constructs, you may like them to hang on the right edge of the
2732 code, or you may like them to start a new line of code. You can use
2733 the two variables c-hanging-braces-alist and c-hanging-colons-alist
2734 to control whether newlines are placed before and/or after colons and
2735 braces when certain C and C++ constructs are entered. For example,
2736 you can control whether the colon that introduces a C++ member
2737 initialization list hangs on the right edge, starts a new line, or has
2738 no newlines either before or after it.
2740 c-special-indent-hook is run after a line is indented by CC mode. You
2741 can perform any custom indentations here.
2743 c-delete-function is the function that is called when a single
2744 character is deleted with the c-electric-delete command (DEL).
2746 c-electric-pound-behavior describes what happens when you enter the
2747 `#' that introduces a cpp macro.
2749 If c-tab-always-indent is neither t nor nil, then TAB inserts a tab
2750 when within strings, comments, and cpp directives, but it reindents
2751 the line unconditionally.
2753 c-inhibit-startup-warnings-p inhibits warnings about any old
2754 version of Emacs you might be running, which could be incompatible
2757 ** There are two new minor-mode features in CC mode: auto-newline and
2758 hungry-delete. Auto-newline inserts newlines automatically as you
2759 type certain constructs. Hungry-delete consumes all preceding
2760 whitespace (spaces, tabs, and newlines) when the delete key is hit.
2761 You can toggle auto-newline on and off on a per-buffer basis by
2762 hitting C-c C-a. You can toggle hungry-delete on and off by hitting
2763 C-c C-d. You can toggle them both on and off together with C-c C-t.
2765 ** Slash (`/') and star (`*') are now both electric characters.
2769 The new C-c C-o (c-set-offset) command can be used to interactively change
2770 the offset for a particular syntactic symbol.
2772 The new command C-c : (c-scope-operator) inserts the C++ scope operator in
2775 The new command C-c C-q (c-indent-defun) indents the entire enclosing
2776 top-level function or class.
2778 The new command C-c C-s (c-show-semantic-information) echos the current
2779 syntactic analysis without re-indenting the current line.
2781 The new commands M-x c-forward-into-nomenclature and M-x
2782 c-backward-into-nomenclature (currently otherwise unbound to a key
2783 sequence), make movement easier when using the C++ variable naming
2784 convention of VariableNamesWithoutUnderscoresButEachWordCapitalized.
2786 ** Command from c-mode.el that have been renamed in cc-mode.el:
2788 electric-c-brace => c-electric-brace
2789 electric-c-semi => c-electric-semi&comma
2790 electric-c-sharp-sign => c-electric-pound
2791 mark-c-function => c-mark-function
2792 electric-c-terminator => c-electric-colon
2793 indent-c-exp => c-indent-exp
2794 set-c-style => c-set-style
2796 ** Variables from c-mode.el that are obsolete with cc-mode.el:
2799 c-brace-imaginary-offset
2803 c-continued-statement-offset
2804 c-continued-brace-offset
2806 * Lisp programming changes in Emacs 19.23.
2808 ** To pop up a dialog box, call x-popup-dialog.
2809 It takes two arguments, POSITION and CONTENTS.
2811 POSITION specifies which frame to place the dialog box over;
2812 the dialog box always goes on the center of the frame.
2813 POSITION may be a mouse event, a window, a frame,
2814 or t meaning use the frame that the mouse is in.
2816 CONTENTS specifies the contents of the dialog box.
2817 It looks like a single pane of a popup menu:
2818 (TITLE ITEM1 ITEM2 ...), where each ITEM has the form (STRING . VALUE).
2819 The return value is VALUE from the chosen item.
2821 An ITEM may also be just a string--that makes a nonselectable item.
2822 An ITEM may also be nil--that means to put all preceding items
2823 on the left of the dialog box and all following items on the right.
2824 (By default, approximately half appear on each side.)
2826 If your Emacs is not using an X toolkit, then it cannot display a
2827 real dialog box; so instead it displays a pop-up menu in the center
2830 ** y-or-n-p, yes-or-no-p and map-y-or-n-p now use menus or dialog boxes
2831 to ask their question(s) if the command that is running was reached by
2834 If you want to control which way these functions work, bind the
2835 variable last-nonmenu-event around the call. These functions use the
2836 keyboard if that variable holds a keyboard event (actually, any
2837 non-list); they use the mouse if that variable holds a mouse event
2838 (actually, any list).
2840 ** The mouse-face property is now implemented, both in overlays and as
2841 a text property. It specifies a face to use when the mouse is in the
2842 range of text for which the property is specified.
2844 ** When text has a non-nil `intangible' property, you cannot move point
2845 within it or right before it. If you try, point actually moves to the
2846 end of the intangible text. Note that this means that backward-char
2847 is a no-op when there is an intangible character to the left of point.
2849 ** minibuffer-exit-hook is a new normal hook that is run when you
2850 exit the minibuffer.
2852 ** The variable x-cross-pointer-shape specifies the cursor shape to use
2853 when the mouse is over text that has a mouse-face property.
2855 ** The new variable interpreter-mode-alist specifies major modes to use
2856 for shell scripts that specify a command interpreter. Its elements
2857 look like (INTERPRETER . MODE); for example, ("perl" . perl-mode) is
2858 one element present by default. This feature applies only when the
2859 file name doesn't indicate which mode to use.
2861 ** If you use a minibuffer-only frame, set the variable
2862 minibuffer-auto-raise to t, and entering the minibuffer will then
2863 raise the minibuffer frame.
2865 ** If pop-up-frames is t, display-buffer now looks for an existing
2866 window in any visible frame, showing the specified buffer, and uses
2867 such a window in preference to making a new frame.
2869 ** In the functions next-window, previous-window, next-frame,
2870 previous-frame, get-buffer-window, get-lru-window, get-largest-window
2871 and delete-windows-on, if you specify `visible' for the last argument,
2872 it means to consider all visible frames.
2874 ** Mouse events now give the X and Y coordinates in pixels, rather than
2875 in characters. You can convert these values to characters by dividing by
2876 the values of (frame-char-width) and (frame-char-height).
2878 ** The new functions mouse-pixel-position and set-mouse-pixel-position
2879 read and set the mouse position in units of pixels. The existing
2880 functions mouse-position and set-mouse-position continue to work with
2881 units of characters.
2883 ** The new function compute-motion is useful for computing the width
2884 of certain text when it is displayed.
2886 ** The function vertical-motion now takes an option second argument WINDOW
2887 which says which window to use for the display calculations.
2889 vertical-motion always operates on the current buffer.
2890 It is ok to specify a window displaying some other buffer.
2891 Then vertical-motion uses the width, hscroll and display-table of
2892 the specified window, but still scans the current buffer.
2894 ** An error no longer sets last-command to t; the value of last-command
2895 does reflect the previous command (the one that got an error).
2897 If you do not want a particular command to be recognized as the
2898 previous command in the case where it got an error, you must code that
2899 command to prevent this. Set this-command to t at the beginning of
2900 the command, and set this-command back to its proper value at the end,
2903 (defun foo (args...)
2905 (setq this-command t)
2907 (setq this-command 'foo))
2911 (defun foo (args...)
2913 (let ((old-this-command this-command))
2914 (setq this-command t)
2916 (setq this-command old-this-command)))
2918 The undo and yank commands do this.
2920 ** If you specify an explicit title for a new frame when you create it,
2921 the title is used as the resource name when looking up X resources to
2922 control the shape of that frame. If you don't specify the frame title,
2923 the value of x-resource-name is used, as before.
2925 ** The frame parameter user-position, if non-nil, says that the user
2926 has specified the frame position. Emacs reports this to the window
2927 manager, to tell it not to override the position that the user
2930 ** Major modes can now set change-major-mode-hook to arrange for state
2931 to be cleaned up when the user switches to a new major mode. The function
2932 kill-all-local-variables runs this hook. For best results, make the hook a
2933 buffer-local variable so that it will disappear after doing its job and will
2934 not interfere with the subsequent major mode.
2936 ** The new variable overriding-local-map, if non-nil, specifies a keymap
2937 that overrides the current local map, all minor mode keymaps, and all
2938 text property keymaps. Incremental search uses this feature to override
2939 all other keymaps temporarily.
2941 ** A key definition in a menu keymap can now have additional structure:
2942 in addition to (ITEMNAME [HELPSTRING] . COMMAND) which was allowed
2943 before, the form (ITEMNAME [HELPSTRING] (...) . COMMAND) is
2944 allowed. (HELPSTRING is optional, and is not currently used.)
2946 Here (...) represents a sublist containing information about keyboard
2947 key sequences that run the same command COMMAND. Displaying the menu
2948 automatically creates and updates the sublist when appropriate; you
2949 need never set these up yourself.
2951 lookup-key, key-binding, and similar functions return just COMMAND,
2952 not the whole binding.
2954 To precompute this information for a given keymap, you can do
2955 (x-popup-menu nil KEYMAP).
2957 ** When you specify coordinates for x-popup-menu as a list ((XOFFSET
2958 YOFFSET) WINDOW), the coordinates are now measured in pixels.
2960 ** where-is-internal now takes just four arguments:
2961 DEFINITION KEYMAP FIRSTONLY NOINDIRECT.
2962 The single argument KEYMAP replaces two arguments KEYMAP and KEYMAP1.
2964 If KEYMAP is non-nil, where-is-internal searches only KEYMAP and the
2967 If KEYMAP is nil, where-is-internal searches all the currently active
2968 keymaps, but finds the active keymaps as if overriding-local-map were
2971 If you pass a list of the form (keymap) as KEYMAP, where-is-internal
2972 searches only the global map. (This is not a special case--it follows
2973 from the specifications above.)
2975 If you pass the value of overriding-local-map as KEYMAP, where-is-internal
2976 searches in exactly the same was as command execution does.
2978 ** Use the macro define-derived-mode to define a new major mode that
2979 inherits the definition of another major mode. Here's how to define a
2980 command named hypertext-mode that inherits from the command text-mode:
2982 (define-derived-mode hypertext-mode text-mode "Hypertext"
2983 "Major mode for hypertext.\n\n\\{hypertext-mode-map}"
2984 (setq case-fold-search nil))
2986 (define-key hypertext-mode-map [down-mouse-3] 'do-hyper-link)
2988 The new mode has its own keymap, which inherits from that of the
2989 original mode. It also has its own syntax and abbrev tables, which
2990 are initialized by copying those of the original mode. It also has
2991 its own mode hook. All are given names made by appending a suffix
2992 to the name of the new mode.
2994 ** A syntax table can now inherit the data for some characters from
2995 standard-syntax-table, while specifying other characters itself.
2996 Syntax code 13 means "inherit this character from the standard syntax
2997 table." In modify-syntax-entry, the character `@' represents this code.
2999 The function `make-syntax-table' now creates a syntax table which
3000 inherits all letters and control characters (0 to 31 and 128 to 255)
3001 from the standard syntax table, while copying the other characters
3002 from the standard syntax table. Most syntax tables in Emacs are set
3005 This sort of inheritance is useful for people who set up character
3006 sets with additional alphabetic characters in the range 128 to 255.
3007 Just changing the standard syntax for these characters affects all
3010 ** The new function transpose-regions swaps two regions of the buffer.
3011 It preserves the markers in those two regions, so that they stay with
3012 the surrounding text as it is swapped.
3014 ** revert-buffer now runs before-revert-hook at the beginning and
3015 after-revert-hook at the end. These can be used by minor modes
3016 that need to clean up state variables.
3018 ** The new function get-char-property is like get-text-property, but
3019 checks for overlays with properties as well as for text properties.
3020 It checks for overlays first, in order of descending priority, and
3021 text properties last.
3023 get-char-property allows windows as the OBJECT argument, as well
3024 as buffers and strings. If you specify a window, then only overlays
3025 active on that window are considered.
3027 ** Overlays can have the `invisible' property.
3029 ** The function insert-file-contents now takes an optional fifth
3030 argument called REPLACE. If this is t, it means to replace the
3031 contents of the buffer (actually, just the accessible portion)
3032 with the contents of the file.
3034 This is better than simply deleting and inserting the whole thing
3035 because (1) it preserves some marker positions and (2) it puts less
3036 data in the undo list.
3038 ** The variable inhibit-first-line-modes-regexps specifies classes of
3039 file names for which -*- on the first line should not be looked for.
3041 ** The variables before-change-functions and after-change-functions
3042 hold lists of functions to call before and after a change in the
3043 buffer's text. They work much like before-change-function and
3044 after-change-function, except that they hold a list of functions
3045 instead of just one.
3047 These variables will eventually make before-change-function and
3048 after-change-function obsolete.
3050 ** The variable kill-buffer-query-functions holds a list of functions
3051 to be called with no arguments when a buffer is about to be killed.
3052 (That buffer is the current buffer when the function is called.)
3053 If any of the functions returns nil, the buffer is not killed
3054 (and the remaining functions in the list are not called).
3056 ** The variable kill-emacs-query-functions holds a list of functions
3057 to be called with no arguments when you ask to exit Emacs.
3058 If any of the functions returns nil, the exit is canceled
3059 (and the remaining functions in the list are not called).
3061 ** The argument for buffer-disable-undo is now optional,
3062 like the argument for buffer-enable-undo.
3064 ** The new variable system-configuration holds the canonical three-part
3065 GNU configuration name for which Emacs was built.
3067 ** The function system-name now tries harder to return a fully qualified
3070 ** The variable emacs-major-version holds the major version number
3071 of Emacs. (Currently 19.)
3073 ** The variable emacs-minor-version holds the minor version number
3074 of Emacs. (Currently 23.)
3076 ** The default value of comint-input-autoexpand is now nil.
3077 However, Shell mode sets it from the value of shell-input-autoexpand,
3078 whose default value is `history'.
3080 ** The new function set-process-window-size specifies the terminal window
3081 size for a subprocess. On some systems it sends the subprocess a signal
3082 to let it know that the size has changed.
3084 ** %P is a new way to display a percentage in the mode line. It
3085 displays the percentage of the buffer text that is above the *bottom*
3086 of the window (which includes the text visible, in the window as well
3087 as the text above the top). It displays `Top' as well as the
3088 percentage if the top of the buffer is visible on screen.
3090 ** %+ in the mode line specs displays `*' if the buffer is modified,
3091 and otherwise `-'. It never displays `%', as `%*' would do; whether the
3092 buffer is read-only has no effect on %+.
3094 ** The new functions ffloor, fceiling, fround and ftruncate take a
3095 floating point argument and return a floating point result whose value
3096 is a nearby integer. ffloor returns the nearest integer below; fceiling,
3097 the nearest integer above; ftruncate, the nearest integer in the
3098 direction towards zero; fround, the nearest integer.
3100 ** Setting `print-escape-newlines' to a non-nil value now also makes
3101 formfeeds print as ``\f''.
3103 ** auto-mode-alist now has a new feature. If an element has the form
3104 (REGEXP FUNCTION t), and REGEXP matches the file name, then after calling
3105 FUNCTION, Emacs deletes the part of the file name that matched REGEXP
3106 and then searches auto-mode-alist again for a new match.
3108 This is useful for uncompression packages. An entry of this sort for
3109 .gz can uncompress the file and then put the uncompressed file in the
3110 proper mode according to the name sans .gz.
3112 ** The new function emacs-pid returns the process ID number of Emacs.
3114 ** user-login-name now consistently checks the LOGNAME environment
3115 variable before USER. user-original-login-name is obsolete, since it
3116 provides the same functionality. To ignore the environment variables,
3117 use user-real-login-name.
3119 ** There is a more general way of handling the system-specific X
3120 keysyms. Set the variable system-key-alist to an alist containing
3121 elements of the form (CODE . SYMBOL), where CODE is the numeric keysym
3122 code minus the "vendor specific" bit, and symbol is the name for the
3125 ** You can use the variable command-line-functions to set up functions
3126 to process unrecognized command line arguments. The variable's value
3127 should be a list of functions of no arguments. The functions are
3128 called successively until one of them returns non-nil.
3130 Each function should access the free variables argi (the current
3131 argument) and command-line-args-left (the remaining arguments). The
3132 function should return non-nil only if it recognizes and processes the
3133 argument in argi. If it does so, it may consume following arguments
3134 as well by removing them from command-line-args-left.
3136 ** There's a new way for a magic file name handler to run a primitive
3137 and inhibit handling of the file name. Here is how to do it:
3139 (let ((inhibit-file-name-handlers
3140 (cons 'ange-ftp-file-handler
3141 (and (eq inhibit-file-name-operation operation)
3142 inhibit-file-name-handlers)))
3143 (inhibit-file-name-operation operation))
3144 (apply this-operation args))
3146 The function find-file-name-handler now takes two arguments. The
3147 second argument is OPERATION, the operation for which the handler is
3150 People have suggested that the second argument should be optional, for
3151 backward compatibility. It would be nice if that were possible, but
3152 it is not. There is simply no way for find-file-name-handler to do
3153 the right thing without receiving the proper value for its second
3156 ** The variable completion-regexp-list affects the completion
3157 primitives try-completion and all-completions. They consider
3158 only the possible completions that match each regexp in the list.
3160 ** Case conversion in the function replace-match has been changed.
3162 The old behavior was this: if any word in the old text was
3163 capitalized, replace-match capitalized each word of the replacement
3166 The new behavior is this: if the first word in the old text is capitalized,
3167 replace-match capitalizes the first word of the replacement text.
3169 ** You can now specify a case table with CANON non-nil and EQV nil.
3170 Then the EQV part of the case table is deduced from CANON.
3172 ** The new function minibuffer-prompt takes no arguments and returns
3173 the current minibuffer prompt string.
3175 The new function minibuffer-prompt-width takes no arguments and
3176 returns the display width of the minibuffer prompt string.
3178 ** The new function frame-first-window returns the window at the
3179 upper left corner of a given frame.
3181 ** wholenump is a new alias for natnump.
3183 ** The variable installation-directory, if non-@code{nil}, names a
3184 directory within which to look for the `lib-src' and `etc'
3185 subdirectories. This is non-nil when Emacs can't find those
3186 directories in their standard installed locations, but can find them
3187 near where the Emacs executable was found.
3189 ** invocation-name and invocation-directory are now variables as well
3190 as functions. The variable values are the same values that the
3191 functions return: the Emacs program name sans directories, and the
3192 directory it was found in. (invocation-directory may be nil, if Emacs
3193 can't determine which directory it should be.)
3195 ** Installation change regarding version number counting.
3197 The version number of an Emacs executable contains three numbers.
3198 The first two describe the Emacs release and the third increments
3199 each time you build Emacs.
3201 Now the file version.el contains only the first two version numbers.
3202 The third component is now determined on the basis of the names of the
3203 existing executable files. This means that version.el is not altered
3208 ** The mouse click M-mouse-2 now inserts the current secondary
3209 selection (from Emacs or any other X client) where you click.
3210 It does not move point.
3211 This command is called mouse-yank-secondary.
3213 mouse-kill-secondary no longer has a key binding by default.
3214 Clicking M-mouse-3 (mouse-secondary-save-then-kill) twice
3215 may be a convenient enough way of killing the secondary selection.
3216 Or perhaps there should be a keyboard binding for killing the
3217 secondary selection. Any suggestions?
3221 *** `icomplete' provides character-by-character information
3222 about what you could complete if you type TAB.
3224 *** `avoid' moves the mouse away from point so that it doesn't hide
3227 *** `shadowfile' helps you update files that are supposed to be stored
3228 identically in different places (perhaps on different machines).
3230 ** C-h p now knows about four additional keywords: data, faces, mouse,
3233 ** The key for starting an inferior Lisp process, in Lisp mode,
3234 is now C-c C-z instead of C-c C-l.
3236 ** When the VC commands ask whether to save the buffer, if you say no,
3237 they signal an error. This is so that you won't operate on the wrong
3240 ** ISO Accents mode now supports `"s' as a way of typing German sharp s.
3242 ** By default, comint buffers (including Shell mode and debuggers)
3243 no longer try to scroll to keep the cursor on the bottom line.
3244 This feature was added in 19.21 but did not work smoothly enough.
3246 ** Emacs now handles the window manager "delete window" operation.
3248 ** Display of buffers with text properties is much faster now.
3250 ** The feature previously announced whereby `insert' does not inherit
3251 text properties from surrounding text was not fully implemented
3252 before; but now it is. use `insert-and-inherit' if you wish to
3253 inherit sticky properties from the surrounding text.
3255 ** The functions next-property-change, previous-property-change,
3256 next-single-property-change, and previous-single-property-change
3257 now take one additional optional argument LIMIT that is a position at
3258 which to stop scanning. If scan ends without finding the property
3259 change sought, these functions return the specified limit.
3261 The value returned by previous-single-property-change and
3262 previous-property-change, when they do find a change, is now one
3263 greater than what it used to be. It is the position between the two
3264 characters whose properties differ, which is one greater than the
3265 position of the first character found (while scanning back) with
3266 different properties.
3268 * User editing changes in version 19.21.
3270 ** ISO Accents mode supports four additional characters:
3271 A-with-ring (entered as /A), AE ligature (entered as /E),
3272 and their lower-case equivalents.
3274 * User editing changes in version 19.20.
3275 (See following page for Lisp programming changes.)
3277 Note that some of these changes were made subsequent to the Emacs 19.20
3278 editions of the Emacs manual and Emacs Lisp manual; therefore, if you
3279 have those editions, do read this page.
3281 ** Dragging with mouse button 1 now puts the selected region
3282 in the kill ring so you can paste it into other X applications.
3284 ** Double and triple clicks with button 1 now behave as in xterm,
3285 selecting the word or line surrounding where you click. If you drag
3286 after the last click, you can select a range of words or lines.
3288 ** You can use button 3 to extend a mouse-selected region, as in xterm.
3289 This works for regions selected either by dragging Mouse-1 or by
3290 multiple-clicking Mouse-1. Clicking Mouse-3 moves the end of the
3291 region that is (initially) nearer to where you click.
3293 If the selection was first made by multiple-clicking Mouse-1, and thus
3294 consists of entire words or lines, Mouse-3 preserves that state.
3296 As before, clicking Mouse-3 again in the same place kills the region
3299 ** The secondary selection commands, M-Mouse-1 and M-Mouse-3, have been
3302 ** You can now search for strings and regexps using the Edit menu bar menu.
3304 ** You can now access bookmarks using the Bookmark submenu in the File
3305 menu in the menu bar.
3307 ** ISO Accents mode, a buffer-local minor mode, provides a convenient
3308 way to type certain non-ASCII characters. It makes the characters `,
3309 ', ", ^, ~ and / serve as modifiers for the following letter. ` and '
3310 add accents, " adds an umlaut or dieresis, ^ adds a circumflex, ~
3311 adds a tilde, and / adds a slash to the following letter.
3313 If the following character is not a letter, or cannot be modified as
3314 requested, then both characters stand for themselves. If you
3315 duplicate the modifier accent character, that enters the corresponding
3316 ISO non-spacing accent character (thus, '' enters the ISO acute-accent
3317 character). To enter a modifier character itself, type it followed by
3320 This feature can be used whenever a key sequence is expected: for
3321 ordinary insertion, for searching, and for certain command arguments.
3323 A few special combinations:
3325 ~c => c with cedilla
3327 ~< => left guillemot
3328 ~> => right guillemot
3330 ** iso-transl.el is a new library that replaces iso-insert.el.
3331 It defines C-x 8 as an insertion prefix for the ISO characters
3332 between 128 and 255, much like iso-insert, except that iso-transl
3333 works even in searches and help commands--wherever a key sequence
3336 To define case-conversion for these characters for ISO 8859/1,
3337 load the library iso-syntax. (This is not new.)
3339 ** M-TAB in Text mode now runs the command ispell-complete-word
3340 which performs completion using the spelling dictionary.
3342 The spelling correction submenu now includes this command
3343 and another command which completes a word fragment (that is,
3344 it doesn't assume that the text to be completed starts at the
3345 beginning of a word.
3347 ** In incremental search, you can use M-y to yank the most recent kill
3348 into the search string.
3350 ** The new function ispell-message checks the spelling of a message
3351 you are about to send or post. It ignores text cited from other
3354 To automatically check all your outgoing messages, include the
3355 following line in your .emacs file:
3356 (setq news-inews-hook (setq mail-send-hook 'ispell-message))
3358 ** There is now a separate minibuffer history list for the names of
3359 extended commands. This history list is used by M-x when reading
3360 the command name. The motivation for this is to prevent command
3361 names from appearing in the history used for other minibuffer
3364 Note that the history list for entire commands that use the minibuffer
3365 is a separate feature. That history list records a command with all
3366 its arguments, and you must use C-x ESC ESC to access it.
3368 ** You can use the new command C-x v ~ VERSION RET to examine a
3369 specified version of a file that is maintained with version control.
3371 ** In Indented Text mode, only blank lines now separate paragraphs.
3372 Indented lines continue the paragraph that is in progress. This makes
3373 the user option variable adaptive-fill-mode have its intended effect.
3375 ** Local variable specifications in files for variables whose names end
3376 in `-hook' and `-function' are now controlled by the variable
3377 `enable-local-eval', just like the `eval' variable.
3379 ** C-x r j (jump-to-register) when restoring a frame configuration now
3380 makes all unwanted frames (existing frames not mentioned in the
3381 configuration) invisible.
3383 If you want to delete these unwanted frames, use a prefix argument for
3386 ** You can customize the calendar to display weeks beginning on
3387 Monday: set the variable `calendar-week-start-day' to 1.
3391 If you save messages to a file in Unix format while viewing a message
3392 with its whole header, this now copies to the file the entire header
3393 of each message copied.
3395 ** Comint mode changes.
3397 C-c C-e shows as much output as possible in the window.
3398 C-c RET copies an old input (the one at point)
3399 and places the copy after the latest prompt.
3400 C-c C-p and C-c C-n move through the buffer, stopping at places
3401 where the subshell prompted for input.
3402 C-c C-h lists the input history in a `*Help*' buffer.
3404 There are new menu bar items for completion/input/output/signal commands.
3406 Input behaviour is configurable. Variables control whether some windows
3407 showing the buffer scroll to the bottom before insertion. These are
3408 `comint-scroll-to-bottom-on-input' and `before-change-function'. By default,
3409 insertion causes the selected window to scroll to the bottom before insertion
3412 Subprocess output now keeps point at the end of the buffer in each
3413 window individually if point was already at the end of the buffer in
3416 If `comint-scroll-show-maximum-output' is non-nil (which is the
3417 default), then scrolling due to arrival of output tries to place the
3418 last line of text at the bottom line of the window, so as to show as
3419 much useful text as possible. (This mimics the scrolling behavior of
3422 By setting `comint-scroll-to-bottom-on-output', you can opt for having
3423 point jump to the end of the buffer whenever output arrives--no matter
3424 where in the buffer point was before. If the value is `this', point
3425 jumps in the selected window. If the value is `all', point jumps in
3426 each window that shows the comint buffer. If the value is `other',
3427 point jumps in all nonselected windows that show the current buffer.
3428 The default value is nil, which means point does not jump to the end.
3430 Input history insertion is configurable. A variable controls whether only the
3431 first instance of successive identical inputs is stored in the input history.
3432 This is `comint-input-ignoredups'.
3434 Completion (bound to TAB) is now more general. Depending on context,
3435 completion now operates on the input history, on command names, or (as
3436 before) on filenames.
3438 Filename completion is configurable. Variables control whether
3439 file/directory suffix characters are added (`comint-completion-addsuffix'),
3440 whether shortest completion is acceptable when no further unambiguous
3441 completion is possible (`comint-completion-recexact'), and the timing of
3442 completion candidate listing (`comint-completion-autolist').
3444 Comint mode now provides history expansion. Insert input using `!'
3445 and `^', in the same syntax that typical shells use; then type TAB.
3446 This searches the comint input history for a matching element,
3447 performs substitution if necessary, and places the result in the
3448 comint buffer in place of the original input.
3450 History references in the input may be expanded before insertion into
3451 the input ring, or on input to the interpreter (and therefore
3452 visibly). The variable `comint-input-autoexpand' specifies which.
3454 You can make the SPC key perform history expansion by binding
3455 SPC to the command `comint-magic-space'.
3457 The command `comint-dynamic-complete-variable' does variable name
3458 completion using the environment variables as set within Emacs. The
3459 variables controlling filename completion apply to variable name
3460 completion too. This command is normally available through the menu
3465 Paragraph motion and marking commands (default bindings M-{, M-}, M-h) operate
3466 on output groups (i.e., shell prompt plus associated shell output).
3468 TAB now completes commands, as well as file names and expand history.
3469 Commands are searched for along the path that Emacs has on startup.
3471 C-c C-f now moves forward a command (`shell-forward-command') and
3472 C-c C-b now moves backward a command (`shell-backward-command').
3474 Command completion is configurable. The variables controlling
3475 filename completion in comint mode apply, together with a variable
3476 controlling whether to restrict possible completions to only files
3477 that are executable (`shell-command-execonly').
3479 The input history is initialised from the file name given in the
3480 variable `shell-input-ring-file-name'--normally `.history' in your
3483 Directory tracking is more robust. It can cope with command sequences
3484 and forked commands, and can detect the failure of directory changing
3485 commands in most circumstances. It's still not infallible, of course.
3487 You can now configure the behaviour of `pushd'. Variables control
3488 whether `pushd' behaves like `cd' if no argument is given
3489 (`shell-pushd-tohome'), pop rather than rotate with a numeric argument
3490 (`shell-pushd-dextract'), and only add directories to the directory
3491 stack if they are not already on it (`shell-pushd-dunique'). The
3492 configuration you choose should match the underlying shell, of course.
3494 * Emacs Lisp programming changes in Emacs 19.20.
3496 ** A new function `remove-hook' is now used to remove a hook that you might
3497 have added with `add-hook'.
3499 ** There is now a Lisp pretty-printer in the library `pp'.
3501 ** The partial Common Lisp support has been entirely reimplemented.
3503 ** When you insert text using `insert', `insert-before-markers' or
3504 `insert-buffer-substring', text properties are no longer inherited
3505 from the surrounding text.
3507 When you want to inherit text properties, use the new functions
3508 `insert-and-inherit' or `insert-before-markers-and-inherit'.
3510 The self-inserting character command does do inheritance.
3512 ** Frame creation hooks.
3514 The function make-frame now runs the normal hooks
3515 before-make-frame-hook and after-make-frame-hook.
3517 ** You can now use function-key-map to make a key an alias for other
3518 key sequences that can vary depending on circumstances. To do this,
3519 give the key a definition in function-key-map which is a function
3520 rather than a specific expansion key sequence.
3522 If the function reads input itself, it can have the effect of altering
3523 the event that follows. For example, here's how to define C-c h to
3524 turn the character that follows into a hyper character:
3526 (define-key function-key-map "\C-ch" 'hyperify)
3528 (defun hyperify (prompt)
3529 (let ((e (read-event)))
3530 (vector (if (numberp e)
3531 (logior (lsh 1 20) e)
3532 (if (memq 'hyper (event-modifiers e))
3534 (add-event-modifier "H-" e))))))
3536 (defun add-event-modifier (string e)
3537 (let ((symbol (if (symbolp e) e (car e))))
3538 (setq symbol (intern (concat string (symbol-name symbol))))
3541 (cons symbol (cdr e)))))
3543 The character translation function gets one argument, which is the
3544 prompt that was specified in read-key-sequence--or nil if the key
3545 sequence is being read by the editor command loop. In most cases
3546 you can just ignore the prompt value.
3548 ** Changes for reading and writing text properties.
3550 New low-level Lisp features make it possible to write Lisp programs to
3551 save text properties in files, and read text properties from files.
3552 You can program any file format you like.
3554 The variable `write-region-annotation-functions' should contain a list
3555 of functions to be run by `write-region' to encode text properties in
3556 some fashion as annotations to the text that is written.
3558 Each function in the list is called with two arguments: the start and
3559 end of the region to be written. These functions should not alter the
3560 contents of the buffer. Instead, they should return lists indicating
3561 annotations to write in the file in addition to the text in the
3564 Each function should return a list of elements of the form (POSITION
3565 . STRING), where POSITION is an integer specifying the relative
3566 position in the text to be written, and STRING is the annotation to
3569 Each list returned by one of these functions must be already sorted in
3570 increasing order by POSITION. If there is more than one function,
3571 `write-region' merges the lists destructively into one sorted list.
3573 When `write-region' actually writes the text from the buffer to the
3574 file, it intermixes the specified annotations at the corresponding
3575 positions. All this takes place without modifying the buffer.
3577 The variable `after-insert-file-functions' should contain a list of
3578 functions to be run each time a file's contents have been inserted into
3579 a buffer. Each function receives one argument, the length of the
3580 inserted text; point indicates the start of that text. The function
3581 should make whatever changes it wants to make, then return the updated
3582 length of the inserted text, as it stands after those changes. The
3583 value returned by one function is used as the argument to the next.
3584 These functions should always return with point at the beginning of
3587 The intended use of `after-insert-file-functions' is for converting
3588 some sort of textual annotations into actual text properties. But many
3589 other uses may be possible.
3591 We now invite users to begin implementing Lisp programs to store and
3592 retrieve text properties in files, using these new primitive features,
3593 and thus to experiment with various data formats and find good ones.
3595 We suggest not trying to handle arbitrary Lisp objects as property
3596 names or property values--because a program that general is probably
3597 difficult to write, and slow. Instead, choose a set of possible data
3598 types that are reasonably flexible, and not too hard to encode.
3600 ** Comint completion.
3602 Currently comint-dynamic-complete-command (and associated variable
3603 comint-after-partial-pathname-command) are set by default to complete a
3604 filename. Other comint-mode users should have their own functions to achieve
3605 this. For example, gud-mode could complete debugger commands. A completion
3606 function is provided solely for this reason (comint-dynamic-simple-complete).
3608 Other comint-mode users should bind comint-dynamic-complete (shell-mode does
3611 ** Comint history reference expansion
3613 Currently comint-input-autoexpand is 'history, which means only expand
3614 history on insertion to comint-input-ring. For non-shell modes, this is
3615 a strange default, since non-shells will not understand history references.
3616 Perhaps it would be better for the variable to be 'input, which means expand
3619 The value 'history might possibly be wrong even for shells, since the
3620 expansion will be done both by comint and the underlying shell (except sh, of
3621 course). It would be better for expansion to be done by one or the other,
3622 not both since they may (ahem) disagree. Since it is silly to put a literal
3623 history reference into comint-input-ring, perhaps it would be better for the
3624 variable to be 'input too.
3626 The reason the variable is not 'input by default is that I was attempting to
3627 adhere to The Principle of Least Astonishment. I didn't want to shock users
3628 by having their input change in front of their eyes.
3630 ** Argument delimiters and Comint mode.
3632 Currently comint-delimiter-argument-list is '(), which means no strings are
3633 to be treated as delimiters and arguments. In shell-mode, this variable is
3634 set to shell-delimiter-argument-list, '("|" "&" "<" ">" "(" ")" ";"). Other
3635 comint-mode users should set this variable too. For example, a lisp-type
3636 mode might want to set this to '("." "(" ")") or some such.
3638 ** Comint output hook.
3640 There is now a hook, comint-output-filter-hook, that is run-hooks'ed by the
3641 output filter, comint-output-filter. This is useful for scrolling (see
3642 below), but also things like processing output for specific text, output
3645 So that such output processing may be done efficiently, there is a new
3646 variable, comint-last-output-start, that records the position of the start of
3647 the lastest output inserted into the buffer (effectively the previous value
3648 of process-mark). Output processing functions should process the text
3649 between comint-last-output-start (or perhaps the beginning of the line that
3650 the position lies on) and process-mark.
3652 ** Comint scrolling.
3654 There is now automatic scrolling of process windows.
3656 Currently comint-scroll-show-maximum-output is t, which means when scrolling
3657 output put process-mark at the bottom of the window. There is a good case
3658 for it to be t, since the user is likely to want to see as much output as
3659 possible. But, then again, there is a comint-show-maximum-output command.
3661 ** Comint history retrieval.
3663 The input following point is not deleted when moving around the input history
3664 (with M-p etc.). Emacs maintainers may not like this. However, I feel this
3665 is a useful feature. The simple remedy is to put end-of-line in before
3666 delete-region in comint-previous-matching-input.
3668 The input history retrieval commands still wrap-around the input ring, unlike
3669 Emacs command history.
3671 * Changes in version 19.19.
3673 ** The new package bookmark.el records named bookmarks: positions that
3674 you can jump to. Bookmarks are saved automatically between Emacs
3677 ** Another simpler package saveplace.el records your position in each
3678 file when you kill its buffer (or kill Emacs), and jumps to the same
3679 position when you visit the file again (even in another Emacs
3680 session). Use `toggle-save-place' to turn on place-saving in a given file;
3681 use (setq-default save-place t) to turn it on for all files.
3683 ** In Outline mode, you can now customize how to compute the level of a
3684 heading line. Set `outline-level' to a function of no arguments which
3685 returns the level, assuming point is at the beginning of a heading
3688 ** You can now specify the prefix key to use for Outline minor mode.
3689 (The default is C-c.) Set the variable outline-minor-mode-prefix to
3690 the key sequence you want to use (as a string or vector).
3692 ** In Bibtex mode, C-c e has been changed to C-c C-b. This is because
3693 C-c followed by a letter is reserved for users.
3695 ** The `mod' function is no longer an alias for `%', but is a separate function
3696 that yields a result with the same sign as the divisor. `floor' now takes an
3697 optional second argument, which divides the first argument before the floor is
3700 ** `%' no longer allows floating point arguments, since the results were often
3701 inconsistent with integer `%'.
3703 * Changes in version 19.18.
3705 ** Typing C-z in an iconified Emacs frame now deiconifies it.
3707 ** hilit19 is a new library for automatic highlighting of parts of the
3708 text in the buffer, based on its meaning and context.
3710 ** Killing no longer sends the killed text to the X clipboard.
3711 And large strings are not put in the cut buffer either.
3712 The variable x-cut-buffer-max specifies the maximum number of characters
3713 to put in the cut buffer.
3715 ** The new command C-x 5 o (other-frame) selects different frames,
3716 successively, in cyclic order. It does for frames what C-x o
3719 ** The command M-ESC (eval-expression) has its own command history.
3721 ** The commands M-! and M-| for running shell commands have their own
3724 ** If the directory containing the Emacs executable has a sibling named
3725 `lisp', that `lisp' directory is added to the end of `load-path'
3726 (provided you don't override the normal value with the EMACSLOADPATH
3727 environment variable). This feature may make it easier to move
3728 an installed Emacs from place to place.
3730 ** M-x validate-tex-buffer now records the locations of mismatches
3731 found in the `*Occur*' buffer. You can go to that buffer and type C-c
3732 C-c to visit a particular mismatch.
3734 ** There are new commands in Shell mode.
3736 C-c C-n and C-c C-p move point to the next or previous shell input line.
3738 C-c C-d is now another way to send an end-of-file to the subshell.
3740 ** Changes to calendar/diary.
3742 Time zone data is now determined automatically, including the
3743 start/stop days and times of daylight savings time. The code now
3744 works correctly almost anywhere in the world.
3746 The format of the holiday specifications has changed and IS NO LONGER
3747 COMPATIBLE with the old (version 18) format. See the documentation of
3748 the variable calendar-holidays for details of the new, improved
3751 The hook `diary-display-hook' has been split into two:
3752 diary-display-hook which should be used ONLY for the display and
3753 `diary-hook' which should be used for appointment notification. If
3754 diary-display-hook is nil (the default), simple-diary-display is
3755 used. This allows the diary hooks to be correctly set with add-hook.
3757 The forms used for dates in diary entries and general display are no
3758 longer autoloaded, but set at load time; this means they will be set
3759 correctly based on values you assign to various variables.
3761 ** The functions x-rebind-key and x-rebind-keys have been deleted,
3762 because you can accomplish the same job by binding keys to keyboard
3765 ** Emacs now distinguishes double and triple drag events and double and
3766 triple button-down events. These work analogously to double and
3767 triple click events.
3769 Double drag events, if not defined, convert to ordinary click events.
3770 Double down events, if not defined, convert first to ordinary down
3771 events, which are then discarded if not defined. Triple events that
3772 are not defined convert to the corresponding double event; if that is
3773 also not defined, it may convert further.
3775 ** The new function event-click-count returns the number of clicks,
3776 from an event which is a list. It is 1 for an ordinary click, drag,
3777 or button-down event, 2 for a double event, and 3 or more for a triple
3780 ** The new function previous-frame is like next-frame, but moves
3781 around through the set of existing frames in the opposite order.
3783 ** The post-command-hook now runs even after commands that get an error
3784 and return to top level. As a consequence of the same change, this
3785 hook also runs before Emacs reads the first command. That might sound
3786 paradoxical, as if this hook were the same as the pre-command-hook.
3787 Actually, they are not similar; the latter runs before *execution* of
3788 a command, but after it has been read.
3790 ** You can turn off the text property hooks that run when point moves
3791 to certain places in the buffer, by binding inhibit-point-motion-hooks
3794 ** Inserting a string with no text properties into the buffer normally
3795 inherits the properties of the preceding character. You can now
3796 control this inheritance by setting the front-sticky and
3797 rear-nonsticky properties of a character.
3799 If you make a character's front-sticky property t, then insertion
3800 before the character inherits its properties. If you make the
3801 rear-nonsticky property t, then insertion after the character does not
3802 inherit its properties. You can regard characters as normally being
3803 rear-sticky and not front-sticky, and this is why insertion normally
3804 inherits from the previous character.
3806 If neither side of an insertion is suitably sticky, then the inserted
3807 text gets no properties. If both sides are sticky, then the inserted
3808 text gets the properties of both sides, with the previous character's
3809 properties taking precedence when both sides have a property in
3812 You can also specify stickiness for individual properties. To do so,
3813 use a list of property names as the value of the front-sticky property
3814 or the rear-nonsticky property. For example, if a character has a
3815 rear-nonsticky property whose value is (face read-only), then
3816 insertion after the character will not inherit its face property or
3817 read-only property (if any), but will inherit any other properties.
3819 The merging of properties when both sides of the insertion are sticky
3820 takes place one property at a time. If the preceding character is
3821 rear-sticky for the property, and the property is non-nil, it
3822 dominates. Otherwise, the following character's property value is
3823 used if it is front-sticky for that property.
3825 ** If you give a character a non-nil `invisible' text property, the
3826 character does not appear on the screen. This works much like
3829 The details of this feature are likely to change in future Emacs
3832 ** In Info, when you go to a node, it runs the normal hook
3833 Info-selection-hook.
3835 ** You can use the new function `invocation-directory' to get the name
3836 of the directory containing the Emacs executable that was run.
3838 ** Entry to the minibuffer runs the normal hook minibuffer-setup-hook.
3840 ** The new function minibuffer-window-active-p takes one argument, a
3841 minibuffer window, and returns t if the window is currently active.
3843 * Changes in version 19.17.
3845 ** When Emacs displays a list of completions in a buffer,
3846 you can select a completion by clicking mouse button 2
3849 ** Use the command `list-faces-display' to display a list of
3850 all the currently defined faces, showing what they look like.
3852 ** Menu bar items from local maps now come after the usual items.
3854 ** The Help menu bar item always comes last in the menu bar.
3856 ** If you enable Font-Lock mode on a buffer containing a program
3857 (certain languages such as C and Lisp are supported), everything you
3858 type is automatically given a face property appropriate to its
3859 syntactic role. For example, there are faces for comments, string
3860 constants, names of functions being defined, and so on.
3862 ** Dunnet, an adventure game, is now available.
3864 ** Several major modes now have their own menu bar items,
3865 including Dired, Rmail, and Sendmail. We would like to add
3866 suitable menu bar items to other major modes.
3868 ** The key binding C-x a C-h has been eliminated.
3869 This is because it got in the way of the general feature of typing
3870 C-h after a prefix character. If you want to run
3871 inverse-add-global-abbrev, you can use C-x a - or C-x a i g instead.
3873 ** If you set the variable `rmail-mail-new-frame' to a non-nil value,
3874 all the Rmail commands to send mail make a new frame to do it in.
3875 When you send the message, or use the menu bar command not to send it,
3876 that frame is deleted.
3878 ** In Rmail, the o and C-o commands are now almost interchangeable.
3879 Both commands check the format of the file you specify, and append
3880 the message to it in Rmail format if it is an Rmail file, and in
3881 inbox file format otherwise. C-o and o are different only when you
3884 ** The function `copy-face' now takes an optional fourth argument
3885 NEW-FRAME. If you specify this, it copies the definition of face
3886 OLD-FACE on frame FRAME to face NEW-NAME on frame NEW-FRAME.
3888 ** A local map can now cancel out one of the global map's menu items.
3889 Just define that subcommand of the menu item with `undefined'
3890 as the definition. For example, this cancels out the `Buffers' item
3891 for the current major mode:
3893 (local-set-key [menu-bar buffer] 'undefined)
3895 ** To put global items at the end of the menu bar, use the new variable
3896 `menu-bar-final-items'. It should be a list of symbols--event types
3897 bound in the menu bar. The menu bar items for these symbols are
3900 ** The list returned by `buffer-local-variables' now contains cons-cell
3901 elements of the form (SYMBOL . VALUE) only for buffer-local variables
3902 that have values. For unbound buffer-local variables, the variable
3903 name (symbol) appears directly as an element of the list.
3905 ** The `modification-hooks' property of a character no longer affects
3906 insertion; it runs only for deletion and modification of the character.
3908 To detect insertion, use `insert-in-front-hooks' and
3909 `insert-behind-hooks' properties. The former runs when text is
3910 inserted immediately preceding the character that has the property;
3911 the latter runs when text is inserted immediately following the
3914 ** Buffer modification now runs hooks belonging to overlays as well as
3915 hooks belonging to characters. If an overlay has a
3916 `modification-hooks' property, it applies to any change to text in the
3917 overlay, and any insertion within the overlay. If the overlay has a
3918 `insert-in-front-hooks' property, it runs for insertion at the
3919 beginning boundary of the overlay. If the overlay has an
3920 `insert-behind-hooks' property, it runs for insertion at the end
3921 boundary of the overlay.
3923 The values of these properties should be lists of functions. Each
3924 function is called, receiving as arguments the overlay in question,
3925 followed by the bounds of the range being modified.
3927 ** The new `-name NAME' option directs Emacs to search for its X
3928 resources using the name `NAME', and sets the title of the initial
3929 frame. This argument was added for consistency with other X clients.
3931 ** The new `-xrm DATABASE' option tells Emacs to treat the string
3932 DATABASE as the text of an X resource database. Emacs searches
3933 DATABASE for resource values, in addition to the usual places. This
3934 argument was added for consistency with other X clients.
3936 ** Emacs now searches for X resources in the files specified by the
3937 XFILESEARCHPATH, XUSERFILESEARCHPATH, and XAPPLRESDIR environment
3938 variables, emulating the functionality provided by programs written
3939 using Xt. Because of this change, Emacs will now notice system-wide
3940 application defaults files, as other X clients do.
3942 XFILESEARCHPATH and XUSERFILESEARCHPATH should be a list of file names
3943 separated by colons; XAPPLRESDIR should be a list of directory names
3944 separated by colons.
3946 Emacs searches for X resources
3947 + specified on the command line, with the `-xrm RESOURCESTRING'
3949 + then in the value of the XENVIRONMENT environment variable,
3950 - or if that is unset, in the file named ~/.Xdefaults-HOSTNAME if it exists
3951 (where HOSTNAME is the hostname of the machine Emacs is running on),
3952 + then in the screen-specific and server-wide resource properties
3953 provided by the server,
3954 - or if those properties are unset, in the file named ~/.Xdefaults
3956 + then in the files listed in XUSERFILESEARCHPATH,
3957 - or in files named LANG/Emacs in directories listed in XAPPLRESDIR
3958 (where LANG is the value of the LANG environment variable), if
3959 the LANG environment variable is set,
3960 - or in files named Emacs in the directories listed in XAPPLRESDIR
3961 - or in ~/LANG/Emacs (if the LANG environment variable is set),
3963 + then in the files listed in XFILESEARCHPATH.
3965 The paths in the variables XFILESEARCHPATH, XUSERFILESEARCHPATH, and
3966 XAPPLRESDIR may contain %-escapes (like the control strings passed to
3967 the the Emacs lisp `format' function or C printf function), which
3970 %N is replaced by the string "Emacs" wherever it occurs.
3971 %T is replaced by "app-defaults" wherever it occurs.
3972 %S is replaced by the empty string wherever it occurs.
3973 %L and %l are replaced by the value of the LANG environment variable; if LANG
3974 is not set, Emacs does not use that directory or file name at all.
3975 %C is replaced by the value of the resource named "customization"
3976 (class "Customization"), as retrieved from the server's resource
3977 properties or the user's ~/.Xdefaults file, or the empty string if
3978 that resource doesn't exist.
3981 if XFILESEARCHPATH is set to the value
3982 "/usr/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%C:/usr/lib/X11/%T/%N%C:/usr/lib/X11/%T/%N",
3983 and the LANG environment variable is set to
3985 and the customization resource is the string
3987 then, in the last step of the process described above, Emacs checks
3988 for resources in the first of the following files that is present and
3990 /usr/lib/X11/english/app-defaults/Emacs-color
3991 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs-color
3992 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
3993 If the LANG environment variable is not set, then Emacs never uses the
3994 first element of the path, "/usr/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%C", because it
3995 contains the %L escape.
3997 If XFILESEARCHPATH is unset, Emacs uses the default value
3998 "/usr/lib/X11/%L/app-defaults/Emacs%C:\
3999 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs%C:\
4000 /usr/lib/X11/%L/app-defaults/Emacs:\
4001 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs"
4003 This feature was added for consistency with other X applications.
4005 ** The new function `text-property-any' scans the region of text from
4006 START to END to see if any character's property PROP is `eq' to
4007 VALUE. If so, it returns the position of the first such character.
4008 Otherwise, it returns nil.
4010 The optional fifth argument, OBJECT, specifies the string or buffer to
4013 ** The new function `text-property-not-all' scans the region of text from
4014 START to END to see if any character's property PROP is not `eq' to
4015 VALUE. If so, it returns the position of the first such character.
4016 Otherwise, it returns nil.
4018 The optional fifth argument, OBJECT, specifies the string or buffer to
4021 ** The function `delete-windows-on' now takes an optional second
4022 argument FRAME, which specifies which frames it should affect.
4023 + If FRAME is nil or omitted, then `delete-windows-on' deletes windows
4024 showing BUFFER (its first argument) on all frames.
4025 + If FRAME is t, then `delete-windows-on' only deletes windows on the
4026 selected frame; other frames are unaffected.
4027 + If FRAME is a frame, then `delete-windows-on' only deletes windows on
4028 the given frame; other frames are unaffected.
4031 * Changes in version 19.16.
4033 ** When dragging the mouse to select a region, Emacs now highlights the
4034 region as you drag (if Transient Mark mode is enabled). If you
4035 continue the drag beyond the boundaries of the window, Emacs scrolls
4036 the window at a steady rate until you either move the mouse back into
4037 the window or release the button.
4039 ** RET now exits `query-replace' and `query-replace-regexp'; this makes it
4040 more consistent with the incremental search facility, which uses RET
4043 ** In C mode, C-c C-u now runs c-up-conditional.
4044 C-c C-n and C-c C-p now run new commands that move forward
4045 and back over balanced sets of C conditionals (c-forward-conditional
4046 and c-backward-conditional).
4048 ** The Edit entry in the menu bar has a new alternative:
4049 "Choose Next Paste". It gives you a menu showing the various
4050 strings in the kill ring; click on one to select it as the text
4051 to be yanked ("pasted") the next time you yank.
4053 ** If you enable Transient Mark mode and set `mark-even-if-inactive' to
4054 non-nil, then the region is highlighted in a transient fashion just as
4055 normally in Transient Mark mode, but the mark really remains active
4056 all the time; commands that use the region can be used even if the
4057 region highlighting turns off.
4059 ** If you type C-h after a prefix key, it displays the bindings
4060 that start with that prefix.
4062 ** The VC package now searches for version control commands in the
4063 directories named by the variable `vc-path'; its value should be a
4066 ** If you are visiting a file that has locks registered under RCS,
4067 VC now displays each lock's owner and version number in the mode line
4068 after the string `RCS'. If there are no locks, VC displays the head
4071 ** When using X, if you load the `paren' library, Emacs automatically
4072 underlines or highlights the matching paren whenever point is
4073 next to the outside of a paren. When point is before an open-paren,
4074 this shows the matching close; when point is after a close-paren,
4075 this shows the matching open.
4077 ** The new function `define-key-after' is like `define-key',
4078 but takes an extra argument AFTER. It places the newly defined
4079 binding after the binding for the event AFTER.
4081 ** `accessible-keymaps' now takes an optional second argument, PREFIX.
4082 If PREFIX is non-nil, it means the value should include only maps for
4083 keys that start with PREFIX.
4085 `describe-bindings' also accepts an optional argument PREFIX which
4086 means to describe only the keys that start with PREFIX.
4088 ** The variable `prefix-help-command' hold a command to run to display help
4089 whenever the character `help-char' follows a prefix key and does not have
4090 a key binding in that context.
4092 ** Emacs now detects double- and triple-mouse clicks. A single mouse
4093 click produces a pair events of the form:
4094 (down-mouse-N POSITION)
4096 Clicking the same mouse button again, soon thereafter and at the same
4097 location, produces another pair of events of the form:
4098 (down-mouse-N POSITION)
4099 (double-mouse-N POSITION 2)
4100 Another click will produce an event pair of the form:
4101 (down-mouse-N POSITION)
4102 (triple-mouse-N POSITION 3)
4103 All the POSITIONs in such a sequence would be identical, except for
4106 To count as double- and triple-clicks, mouse clicks must be at the
4107 same location as the first click, and the number of milliseconds
4108 between the first release and the second must be less than the value
4109 of the lisp variable `double-click-time'. Setting `double-click-time'
4110 to nil disables multi-click detection. Setting it to t removes the
4111 time limit; Emacs then detects multi-clicks by position only.
4113 If `read-key-sequence' finds no binding for a double-click event, but
4114 the corresponding single-click event would be bound,
4115 `read-key-sequence' demotes it to a single-click. Similarly, it
4116 demotes unbound triple-clicks to double- or single-clicks. This means
4117 you don't have to distinguish between single- and multi-clicks if you
4120 Emacs reports all clicks after the third as `triple-mouse-N' clicks,
4121 but increments the click count after POSITION. For example, a fourth
4122 click, soon after the third and at the same location, produces a pair
4123 of events of the form:
4124 (down-mouse-N POSITION)
4125 (triple-mouse-N POSITION 4)
4127 ** The way Emacs reports positions of mouse events has changed
4128 slightly. If a mouse event includes a position list of the form:
4129 (WINDOW (PLACE-SYMBOL) (COLUMN . ROW) TIMESTAMP)
4130 this denotes exactly the same position as the list:
4131 (WINDOW PLACE-SYMBOL (COLUMN . ROW) TIMESTAMP)
4132 That is, the event occurred over a non-textual area of the frame,
4133 specified by PLACE-SYMBOL, a symbol like `mode-line' or
4134 `vertical-scroll-bar'.
4136 Enclosing PLACE-SYMBOL in a singleton list does not change the
4137 position denoted, but the `read-key-sequence' function uses the
4138 presence or absence of the singleton list to tell whether or not it
4139 should prefix the event with its place symbol.
4141 Normally, `read-key-sequence' prefixes mouse events occurring over
4142 non-textual areas with their PLACE-SYMBOLs, to select the sub-keymap
4143 appropriate for the event; for example, clicking on the mode line
4144 produces a sequence like
4145 [mode-line (mouse-1 POSN)]
4146 However, if lisp code elects to unread the resulting key sequence by
4147 placing it in the `unread-command-events' variable, it is important
4148 that `read-key-sequence' not insert the prefix symbol again; that
4149 would produce a malformed key sequence like
4150 [mode-line mode-line (mouse-1 POSN)]
4151 For this reason, `read-key-sequence' encloses the event's PLACE-SYMBOL
4152 in a singleton list when it first inserts the prefix, but doesn't
4153 insert the prefix when processing events whose PLACE-SYMBOLs are
4154 already thus enclosed.
4157 * Changes in version 19.15.
4159 ** `make-frame-visible', which uniconified frames, is now a command,
4160 and thus may be bound to a key. This makes sense because frames
4161 respond to user input while iconified.
4163 ** You can now use Meta mouse clicks to set and use the "secondary
4164 selection". You can drag M-Mouse-1 across the region you want to
4165 select. Or you can press M-Mouse-1 at one end and M-Mouse-3 at the
4166 other (this also copies the text to the kill ring). Repeating M-Mouse-3
4167 again at the same place kills that text.
4169 M-Mouse-2 kills the secondary selection.
4171 Setting the secondary selection does not move point or the mark. It
4172 is possible to make a secondary selection that does not all fit on the
4173 screen, by using M-Mouse-1 at one end, scrolling, then using M-Mouse-3
4176 Emacs has only one secondary selection at any time. Starting to set
4177 a new one cancels any previous one. The secondary selection displays
4178 using a face named `secondary-selection'.
4180 ** There's a new way to request use of Supercite (sc.el). Do this:
4182 (add-hook 'mail-citation-hook 'sc-cite-original)
4184 Currently this works with Rmail. In the future, other Emacs based
4185 mail-readers should be modified to understand this hook also.
4186 In the mean time, you should keep doing what you have done in the past
4187 for those other mail readers.
4189 ** When a regular expression contains `\(...\)' inside a repetition
4190 operator such as `*' or `+', and you ask about the range that was matched
4191 using `match-beginning' and `match-end', the range you get corresponds
4192 to the *last* repetition *only*. In Emacs 18, you would get a range
4193 corresponding to all the repetitions.
4195 If you want to get a range corresponding to all the repetitions,
4196 put a `\(...\)' grouping *outside* the repetition operator. This
4197 is the syntax that corresponds logically to the desired result, and
4198 it works the same in Emacs 18 and Emacs 19.
4200 (This change actually took place earlier, but we didn't know about it
4201 and thus didn't document it.)
4203 * Changes in version 19.14.
4205 ** To modify read-only text, bind the variable `inhibit-read-only'
4206 to a non-nil value. If the value is t, then all reasons that might
4207 make text read-only are inhibited (including `read-only' text properties).
4208 If the value is a list, then a `read-only' property is inhibited
4209 if it is `memq' in the list.
4211 ** If you call `get-buffer-window' passing t as its second argument, it
4212 will only search for windows on visible frames. Previously, passing t
4213 as the secord argument caused `get-buffer-window' to search all
4214 frames, visible or not.
4216 ** If you call `other-buffer' with a nil or omitted second argument, it
4217 will ignore buffers displayed windows on any visible frame, not just
4220 ** You can specify a window or a frame for C-x # to use when
4221 selects a server buffer. Set the variable server-window
4222 to the window or frame that you want.
4224 ** The command M-( now inserts spaces outside the open-parentheses in
4225 some cases--depending on the syntax classes of the surrounding
4226 characters. If the variable `parens-dont-require-spaces' is non-nil,
4227 it inhibits insertion of these spaces.
4229 ** The GUD package now supports the debugger known as xdb on HP/UX
4230 systems. Use M-x xdb. The variable `gud-xdb-directories' lets you
4231 specify a list of directories to search for source code.
4233 ** If you are using the mailabbrev package, you should note that its
4234 function for defining an alias is now called `define-mail-abbrev'.
4235 This package no longer contains a definition for `define-mail-alias';
4236 that name is used only in mailaliases.
4238 ** Inserted characters now inherit the properties of the text before
4239 them, by default, rather than those of the following text.
4241 ** The function `insert-file-contents' now takes optional arguments BEG
4242 and END that specify which part of the file to insert. BEG defaults to
4243 0 (the beginning of the file), and END defaults to the end of the file.
4245 If you specify BEG or END, then the argument VISIT must be nil.
4247 * Changes in version 19.13.
4249 ** Magic file names can now handle the `load' operation.
4251 ** Bibtex mode now sets up special entries in the menu bar.
4253 ** The incremental search commands C-w and C-y, which copy text from
4254 the buffer into the search string, now convert it to lower case
4255 if you are in a case-insensitive search. This is to avoid making
4256 the search a case-sensitive one.
4258 ** GNUS now knows your time zone automatically if Emacs does.
4260 ** Hide-ifdef mode no longer defines keys of the form
4261 C-c LETTER, since those keys are reserved for users.
4262 Those commands have been moved to C-c M-LETTER.
4263 We may move them again for greater consistency with other modes.
4265 * Changes in version 19.12.
4267 ** You can now make many of the sort commands ignore case by setting
4268 `sort-fold-case' to a non-nil value.
4270 * Changes in version 19.11.
4272 ** Supercite is installed.
4274 ** `write-file-hooks' functions that return non-nil are responsible
4275 for making a backup file if you want that to be done.
4276 To do so, execute the following code:
4278 (or buffer-backed-up (backup-buffer))
4280 You might wish to save the file modes value returned by
4281 `backup-buffer' and use that to set the mode bits of the file
4282 that you write. This is what `basic-save-buffer' does when
4283 it writes a file in the usual way.
4285 (This is not actually new, but wasn't documented before.)
4287 * Changes in version 19.10.
4289 ** The command `repeat-complex-command' is now on C-x ESC ESC.
4290 It used to be bound to C-x ESC.
4292 The reason for this change is to make function keys work after C-x.
4294 ** The variable `highlight-nonselected-windows' now controls whether
4295 the region is highlighted in windows other than the selected window
4296 (in Transient Mark mode only, of course, and currently only when
4299 * Changes in version 19.8.
4301 ** It is now simpler to tell Emacs to display accented characters under
4302 X windows. M-x standard-display-european toggles the display of
4303 buffer text according to the ISO Latin-1 standard. With a prefix
4304 argument, this command enables European character display iff the
4305 argument is positive.
4307 ** The `-i' command-line argument tells Emacs to use a picture of the
4308 GNU gnu as its icon, instead of letting the window manager choose an
4309 icon for it. This option used to insert a file into the current
4310 buffer; use `-insert' to do that now.
4312 ** The `configure' script now supports `--prefix' and `--exec-prefix'
4315 The `--prefix=PREFIXDIR' option specifies where the installation process
4316 should put emacs and its data files. This defaults to `/usr/local'.
4317 - Emacs (and the other utilities users run) go in PREFIXDIR/bin
4318 (unless the `--exec-prefix' option says otherwise).
4319 - The architecture-independent files go in PREFIXDIR/lib/emacs/VERSION
4320 (where VERSION is the version number of Emacs, like `19.7').
4321 - The architecture-dependent files go in
4322 PREFIXDIR/lib/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION
4323 (where CONFIGURATION is the configuration name, like mips-dec-ultrix4.2),
4324 unless the `--exec-prefix' option says otherwise.
4326 The `--exec-prefix=EXECDIR' option allows you to specify a separate
4327 portion of the directory tree for installing architecture-specific
4328 files, like executables and utility programs. If specified,
4329 - Emacs (and the other utilities users run) go in EXECDIR/bin, and
4330 - The architecture-dependent files go in
4331 EXECDIR/lib/emacs/VERSION/CONFIGURATION.
4332 EXECDIR/bin should be a directory that is normally in users' PATHs.
4334 ** When running under X, the new lisp function `x-list-fonts'
4335 allows code to find out which fonts are available from the X server.
4336 The first argument PATTERN is a string, perhaps with wildcard characters;
4337 the * character matches any substring, and
4338 the ? character matches any single character.
4339 PATTERN is case-insensitive.
4340 If the optional arguments FACE and FRAME are specified, then
4341 `x-list-fonts' returns only fonts the same size as FACE on FRAME.
4345 * Changes in version 19.
4347 ** When you kill buffers, Emacs now returns memory to the operating system,
4348 thus reducing the size of the Emacs process. All the space that you free
4349 up by killing buffers can now be reused for other buffers no matter what
4350 their sizes, or reused by other processes if Emacs doesn't need it.
4352 ** Emacs now does garbage collection and auto saving while it is waiting
4353 for input, which often avoids the need to do these things while you
4356 The variable `auto-save-timeout' says how many seconds Emacs should
4357 wait, after you stop typing, before it does an auto save and a garbage
4360 ** If auto saving detects that a buffer has shrunk greatly, it refrains
4361 from auto saving that buffer and displays a warning. Now it also turns
4362 off Auto Save mode in that buffer, so that you won't get the same
4365 If you reenable Auto Save mode in that buffer, Emacs will start saving
4366 it again with no further warnings.
4368 ** A new minor mode called Line Number mode displays the current line
4369 number in the mode line, updating it as necessary when you move
4372 However, if the buffer is very large (larger than the value of
4373 `line-number-display-limit'), then the line number doesn't appear.
4374 This is because computing the line number can be painfully slow if the
4375 buffer is very large.
4377 ** You can quit while Emacs is waiting to read or write files.
4379 ** The arrow keys now have default bindings to move in the appropriate
4382 ** You can suppress next-line's habit of inserting a newline when
4383 called at the end of a buffer by setting next-line-add-newlines to nil
4386 ** You can now get back recent minibuffer inputs conveniently. While
4387 in the minibuffer, type M-p to fetch the next earlier minibuffer
4388 input, and use M-n to fetch the next later input.
4390 There are also commands to search forward or backward through the
4391 history for history elements that match a regular expression. M-r
4392 searches older elements in the history, while M-s searches newer
4393 elements. By special dispensation, these commands can always use the
4394 minibuffer to read their arguments even though you are already in the
4395 minibuffer when you issue them.
4397 The history feature is available for all uses of the minibuffer, but
4398 there are separate history lists for different kinds of input. For
4399 example, there is a list for file names, used by all the commands that
4400 read file names. There is a list for arguments of commands like
4401 `query-replace'. There are also very specific history lists, such
4402 as the one that `compile' uses for compilation commands.
4404 ** You can now display text in a mixture of fonts and colors, using the
4405 "face" feature, together with the overlay and text property features.
4406 See the Emacs Lisp manual for details. The Emacs Users Manual describes
4407 how to change the colors and font of standard predefined faces.
4409 ** You can refer to files on other machines using special file name syntax:
4414 When you do this, Emacs uses the FTP program to read and write files on
4415 the specified host. It logs in through FTP using your user name or the
4416 name USER. It may ask you for a password from time to time; this
4417 is used for logging in on HOST.
4419 ** Some C-x key bindings have been moved onto new prefix keys.
4421 C-x r is a prefix for registers and rectangles.
4422 C-x n is a prefix for narrowing.
4423 C-x a is a prefix for abbrev commands.
4426 C-x r SPC point-to-register (Was C-x /)
4427 C-x r j jump-to-register (Was C-x j)
4428 C-x r s copy-to-register (Was C-x x)
4429 C-x r i insert-register (Was C-x g)
4430 C-x r r copy-rectangle-to-register (Was C-x r)
4431 C-x r k kill-rectangle
4432 C-x r y yank-rectangle
4433 C-x r o open-rectangle
4434 C-x r f frame-configuration-to-register
4435 (This saves the state of all windows in all frames.)
4436 C-x r w window-configuration-to-register
4437 (This saves the state of all windows in the selected frame.)
4439 (Use C-x r j to restore a configuration saved with C-x r f or C-x r w.)
4441 C-x n n narrow-to-region (Was C-x n)
4442 C-x n p narrow-to-page (Was C-x p)
4443 C-x n w widen (Was C-x w)
4445 C-x a l add-mode-abbrev (Was C-x C-a)
4446 C-x a g add-global-abbrev (Was C-x +)
4447 C-x a i l inverse-add-mode-abbrev (Was C-x C-h)
4448 C-x a i g inverse-add-global-abbrev (Was C-x -)
4449 C-x a e expand-abbrev (Was C-x ')
4451 (The old key bindings C-x /, C-x j, C-x x and C-x g
4452 have not yet been removed.)
4454 ** You can put a file name in a register to be able to visit the file
4457 (set-register ?CHAR '(file . NAME))
4459 where NAME is the file name as a string. Then C-x r j CHAR finds that
4462 This is useful for files that you need to visit frequently,
4463 but that you don't want to keep in buffers all the time.
4465 ** The keys M-g (fill-region) and C-x a (append-to-buffer)
4466 have been eliminated.
4468 ** The new command `string-rectangle' inserts a specified string on
4469 each line of the region-rectangle.
4471 ** C-x 4 r is now `find-file-read-only-other-window'.
4473 ** C-x 4 C-o is now `display-buffer', which displays a specified buffer
4474 in another window without selecting it.
4476 ** Picture mode has been substantially improved. The picture editing commands
4477 now arrange for automatic horizontal scrolling to keep point visible
4478 when editing a wide buffer with truncate-lines on. Picture-mode
4479 initialization now does a better job of rebinding standard commands;
4480 it finds not just their normal keybindings, but any function keys
4483 ** If you enable Transient Mark mode, then the mark becomes "inactive"
4484 after every command that modifies the buffer. While the mark is
4485 active, the region is highlighted (under X, at least). Most commands
4486 that use the mark give an error if the mark is inactive, but you can
4487 use C-x C-x to make it active again. This feature is also sometimes
4488 known as "Zmacs mode".
4490 ** Outline mode is now available as a minor mode. This minor mode can
4491 combine with any major mode; it substitutes the C-c commands of
4492 Outline mode for those of the major mode. Use M-x outline-minor-mode
4493 to enable and disable the new mode.
4495 M-x outline-mode is unchanged; it still switches to Outline mode as a
4498 ** The default setting of `version-control' comes from the environment
4499 variable VERSION_CONTROL.
4501 ** The user option for controlling whether files can set local
4502 variables is now called `enable-local-variables'. A value of t means
4503 local-variables lists are obeyed; nil means they are ignored; anything
4504 else means query the user.
4506 The user option for controlling use of the `eval' local variable is
4507 now called is `enable-local-eval'; its values are interpreted like
4508 those of `enable-local-variables'.
4510 ** X Window System changes:
4512 C-x 5 C-f and C-x 5 b switch to a specified file or buffer in a new
4513 frame. Likewise, C-x 5 m starts outgoing mail in another frame, and
4514 C-x 5 . finds a tag in another frame.
4516 When you are using X, C-z now iconifies the selected frame.
4518 Emacs can now exchange text with other X applications. Killing or
4519 copying text in Emacs now makes that text available for pasting into
4520 other X applications. The Emacs yanking commands now insert the
4521 latest selection set by other applications, and add the text to the
4522 kill ring. The Emacs commands for selecting and inserting text with
4523 the mouse now use the kill ring in the same way the keyboard killing
4524 and yanking commands do.
4526 The option to specify the title for the initial frame is now `-name NAME'.
4527 There is currently no way to specify an icon title; perhaps we will add
4530 ** Undoing a deletion now puts point back where it was before the
4533 ** The variables that control how much undo information to save have
4534 been renamed to `undo-limit' and `undo-strong-limit'. They used to be
4535 called `undo-threshold' and `undo-high-threshold'.
4537 ** You can now use kill commands in read-only buffers. They don't
4538 actually change the buffer, and Emacs will beep and warn you that the
4539 buffer is read-only, but they do copy the text you tried to kill into
4540 the kill ring, so you can yank it into other buffers.
4542 ** C-o inserts the fill-prefix on the newly created line. The command
4543 M-^ deletes the prefix (if it occurs) after the newline that it
4546 ** C-M-l now runs the command `reposition-window'. It scrolls the
4547 window heuristically in a way designed to get useful information onto
4550 ** C-M-r is now reverse incremental regexp search.
4552 ** M-z now kills through the target character. In version 18, it
4553 killed up to but not including the target character.
4555 ** M-! now runs the specified shell command asynchronously if it
4556 ends in `&' (just as the shell does).
4558 ** C-h C-f and C-h C-k are new help commands that display the Info
4559 node for a given Emacs function name or key sequence, respectively.
4561 ** The C-h p command system lets you find Emacs Lisp packages by
4562 topic keywords. Here is a partial list of package categories:
4564 abbrev abbreviation handling, typing shortcuts, macros
4565 bib code related to the bib bibliography processor
4566 c C and C++ language support
4567 calendar calendar and time management support
4568 comm communications, networking, remote access to files
4569 docs support for Emacs documentation
4570 emulations emulations of other editors
4571 extensions Emacs Lisp language extensions
4572 games games, jokes and amusements
4573 hardware support for interfacing with exotic hardware
4574 help support for on-line help systems
4575 i14n internationalization and alternate character-set support
4576 internal code for Emacs internals, build process, defaults
4577 languages specialized modes for editing programming languages
4578 lisp Lisp support, including Emacs Lisp
4579 local code local to your site
4580 maint maintenance aids for the Emacs development group
4581 mail modes for electronic-mail handling
4582 news support for netnews reading and posting
4583 processes process, subshell, compilation, and job control support
4584 terminals support for terminal types
4585 tex code related to the TeX formatter
4586 tools programming tools
4587 unix front-ends/assistants for, or emulators of, UNIX features
4588 vms support code for vms
4591 More will be added soon.
4593 ** The command to split a window into two side-by-side windows is now
4594 C-x 3. It was C-x 5.
4596 ** M-. (find-tag) no longer has any effect on what M-, will do
4597 subsequently. You can no longer use M-, to find the next similar tag;
4598 you must use M-. with a prefix argument, instead.
4600 The motive for this change is so that you can more reliably use
4601 M-, to resume a suspended `tags-search' or `tags-query-replace'.
4603 ** C-x s (`save-some-buffers') now gives you more options when it asks
4604 whether to save a particular buffer. In addition to `y' or `n', you
4605 can answer `!' to save all the remaining buffers, `.' to save this
4606 buffer but not save any others, ESC to stop saving and exit the
4607 command, and C-h to get help. These options are analogous to those
4610 ** M-x make-symbolic-link does not expand its first argument.
4611 This lets you make a link with a target that is a relative file name.
4613 ** M-x add-change-log-entry and C-x 4 a now automatically insert the
4614 name of the file and often the name of the function that you changed.
4615 They also handle grouping of entries.
4617 There is now a special major mode for editing ChangeLog files. It
4618 makes filling work conveniently. Each bunch of grouped entries is one
4619 paragraph, and each collection of entries from one person on one day
4620 is considered a page.
4622 ** The `comment-region' command adds comment delimiters to the lines that
4623 start in the region, thus commenting them out. With a negative argument,
4624 it deletes comment delimiters from the lines in the region--this cancels
4625 the effect of `comment-region' without an argument.
4627 With a positive argument, `comment-region' adds comment delimiters
4628 but duplicates the last character of the comment start sequence as many
4629 times as the argument specifies. This is a way of calling attention to
4630 the comment. In Lisp, you should use an argument at least two, because
4631 the indentation convention for single semicolon comments does not leave
4632 them at the beginning of a line.
4634 ** If `split-window-keep-point' is non-nil, C-x 2 tries to avoid
4635 shifting any text on the screen by putting point in whichever window
4636 happens to contain the screen line the cursor is already on.
4637 The default is that `split-window-keep-point' is non-nil on slow
4640 ** M-x super-apropos is like M-x apropos except that it searches both
4641 Lisp symbol names and documentation strings for matches. It describes
4642 every symbol that has a match in either the symbol's name or its
4645 Both M-x apropos and M-x super-apropos take an optional second
4646 argument DO-ALL which controls the more expensive part of the job.
4647 This includes looking up and printing the key bindings of all
4648 commands. It also includes checking documentation strings in
4649 super-apropos. DO-ALL is nil by default; use a prefix arg to make it
4652 ** M-x revert-buffer no longer offers to revert from a recent auto-save
4653 file unless you give it a prefix argument. Otherwise it always
4654 reverts from the real file regardless of whether there has been an
4655 auto-save since thenm. (Reverting from the auto-save file is no longer
4656 very useful now that the undo capacity is larger.)
4658 ** M-x recover-file no longer turns off Auto Save mode when it reads
4659 the last Auto Save file.
4661 ** M-x rename-buffer, if you give it a prefix argument,
4662 avoids errors by modifying the new name to make it unique.
4664 ** M-x rename-uniquely renames the current buffer to a similar name
4665 with a numeric suffix added to make it both different and unique.
4667 One use of this command is for creating multiple shell buffers.
4668 If you rename your shell buffer, and then do M-x shell again, it
4669 makes a new shell buffer. This method is also good for mail buffers,
4670 compilation buffers, and any Emacs feature which creates a special
4671 buffer with a particular name.
4673 ** M-x compare-windows with a prefix argument ignores changes in whitespace.
4674 If `compare-ignore-case' is non-nil, then differences in case are also
4677 ** `backward-paragraph' is now bound to M-{ by default, and `forward-paragraph'
4678 to M-}. Originally, these commands were bound to M-[ and M-], but they were
4679 running into conflicts with the use of function keys. On many terminals,
4680 function keys send a sequence beginning ESC-[, so many users have defined this
4683 ** C-x C-u (upcase-region) and C-x C-l (downcase-region) are now disabled by
4684 default; these commands seem to be often hit by accident, and can be
4685 quite destructive if their effects are not noticed immediately.
4687 ** The function `erase-buffer' is now interactive, but disabled by default.
4689 ** When visiting a new file, Emacs attempts to abbreviate the file's
4690 path using the symlinks listed in `directory-abbrev-alist'.
4692 ** When you visit the same file in under two names that translate into
4693 the same name once symbolic links are handled, Emacs warns you that
4694 you have two buffers for the same file.
4696 ** If you wish to avoid visiting the same file in two buffers under
4697 different names, set the variable `find-file-existing-other-name'
4698 non-nil. Then `find-file' uses the existing buffer visiting the file,
4699 no matter which of the file's names you specify.
4701 ** If you set `find-file-visit-truename' non-nil, then the file name
4702 recorded for a buffer is the file's truename (in which all symbolic
4703 links have been removed), rather than the name you specify. Setting
4704 `find-file-visit-truename' also implies the effect of
4705 `find-file-existing-other-name'.
4707 ** C-x C-v now inserts the entire current file name in the minibuffer.
4708 This is convenient if you made a small mistake in typing it. Point
4709 goes after the last slash, before the last file name component, so if
4710 you want to replace it entirely, you can use C-k right away to delete
4713 ** Commands such as C-M-f in Lisp mode now ignore parentheses within comments.
4715 ** C-x q now uses ESC to terminate all iterations of the keyboard
4716 macro, rather than C-d as before.
4718 ** Use the command `setenv' to set an individual environment variable
4719 for Emacs subprocesses. Specify a variable name and a value, both as
4720 strings. This command applies only to subprocesses yet to be
4723 ** Use `rot13-other-window' to examine a buffer with rot13.
4725 This command does not change the text in the buffer. Instead, it
4726 creates a window with a funny display table that applies the code when
4727 displaying the text.
4729 ** The command `M-x version' now prints the current Emacs version; The
4730 `version' command is an alias for the `emacs-version' command.
4732 ** More complex changes in existing packages.
4734 *** `fill-nonuniform-paragraphs' is a new command, much like
4735 `fill-individual-paragraphs' except that only separator lines separate
4736 paragraphs. Since this means that the lines of one paragraph may have
4737 different amounts of indentation, the fill prefix used is the smallest
4738 amount of indentation of any of the lines of the paragraph.
4740 *** Filling is now partially controlled by a new minor mode, Adaptive
4741 Fill mode. When this mode is enabled (and it is enabled by default),
4742 if you use M-x fill-region-as-paragraph on an indented paragraph and
4743 you don't have a fill prefix, it uses the indentation of the second
4744 line of the paragraph as the fill prefix.
4746 Adaptive Fill mode doesn't have much effect on M-q in most major
4747 modes, because an indented line will probably count as a paragraph
4748 starter and thus each line of an indented paragraph will be considered
4749 a paragraph of its own.
4751 *** M-q in C mode now runs `c-fill-paragraph', which is designed
4752 for filling C comments. (We assume you don't want to fill
4753 the code in a C program.)
4755 *** M-$ now runs the Ispell program instead of the Unix spell program.
4757 M-$ starts an Ispell process the first time you use it. But the process
4758 stays alive, so that subsequent uses of M-$ run very fast.
4759 If you want to get rid of the process, use M-x kill-ispell.
4761 To check the entire current buffer, use M-x ispell-buffer.
4762 Use M-x ispell-region to check just the current region.
4764 Ispell commands often involve interactive replacement of words.
4765 You can interrupt the interactive replacement with C-g.
4766 You can restart it again afterward with C-u M-$.
4768 During interactive replacement, you can type the following characters:
4770 a Accept this word this time.
4771 DIGIT Replace the word (this time) with one of the displayed near-misses.
4772 The digit you use says which near-miss to use.
4773 i Insert this word in your private dictionary
4774 so that Ispell will consider it correct it from now on.
4775 r Replace the word this time with a string typed by you.
4777 When the Ispell process starts, it reads your private dictionary which
4778 is the file `~/ispell.words'. If you "insert" words with the `i' command,
4779 these words are added to that file, but not right away--only at the end
4780 of the interactive replacement process.
4782 Use M-x reload-ispell to reload your private dictionary from
4783 `~/ispell.words' if you edit it outside of Ispell.
4785 ** Changes in existing modes.
4787 *** gdb-mode has been replaced by gud-mode.
4789 The package gud.el (Grand Unified Debugger) replaces gdb.el in Emacs
4790 19. It provides a gdb.el-like interface to any of three debuggers;
4791 gdb itself, the sdb debugger supported on some Unix systems, or the
4792 dbx debugger on Berkeley systems.
4794 You start it up with one of the commands M-x gdb, M-x sdb, or
4795 M-x dbx. Each entry point finishes by executing a hook; gdb-mode-hook,
4796 sdb-mode-hook or dbx-mode-hook respectively.
4798 These bindings have changed:
4799 C-x C-a > gud-down (was M-d)
4800 C-x C-a < gud-up (was M-u)
4801 C-x C-a C-r gud-cont (was M-c)
4802 C-x C-a C-n gud-next (was M-n)
4803 C-x C-a C-s gud-step (was M-s)
4804 C-x C-a C-i gud-stepi (was M-i)
4805 C-x C-a C-l gud-recenter (was C-l)
4806 C-d comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof (was C-c C-d)
4808 These bindings have been removed:
4809 C-c C-r (was comint-show-output; now gud-cont)
4811 Since GUD mode uses comint, it uses comint's input history commands,
4812 superseding C-c C-y (copy-last-shell-input):
4813 M-p comint-next-input
4814 M-n comint-previous-input
4815 M-r comint-previous-similar-input
4816 M-s comint-next-similar-input
4817 M-C-r comint-previous-input-matching
4819 The C-x C-a bindings are also active in source files.
4821 *** The old TeX mode bindings of M-{ and M-} have been moved to C-c {
4822 and C-c }. (These commands are `up-list' and `tex-insert-braces';
4823 they are the TeX equivalents of M-( and M-).) This is because M-{
4824 and M-} are now globally defined commands.
4826 *** Changes in Mail mode.
4828 `%' is now a word-separator character in Mail mode.
4830 `mail-signature', if non-nil, tells M-x mail to insert your
4831 `.signature' file automatically. If you don't want your signature in
4832 a particular message, just delete it before you send the message.
4834 You can specify the text to insert at the beginning of each line when
4835 you use C-c C-y to yank the message you are replying to. Set
4836 `mail-yank-prefix' to the desired string. A value of `nil' (the
4837 default) means to use indentation, as in Emacs 18. If you use just
4838 C-u as the prefix argument to C-c C-y, then it does not insert
4839 anything at the beginning of the lines, regardless of the value of
4842 If you like, you can expand mail aliases as abbrevs, as soon as you
4843 type them in. To enable this feature, execute the following:
4845 (add-hook 'mail-setup-hook 'mail-abbrevs-setup)
4847 This can go in your .emacs file.
4849 Word abbrevs don't expand unless you insert a word-separator character
4850 afterward. Any mail aliases that you didn't expand at insertion time
4851 are expanded subsequently when you send the message.
4853 *** Changes in Rmail.
4855 Rmail by default gets new mail only from the system inbox file,
4858 In Rmail, you can retry sending a message that failed
4859 by typing `M-m' on the failure message.
4861 By contrast, another new command M-x rmail-resend is used for
4862 forwarding a message and marking it as "resent from" you
4863 with header fields "Resent-From:" and "Resent-To:".
4865 `e' is now the command to edit a message.
4866 To expunge, type `x'. We know this will surprise people
4867 some of the time, but the surprise will not be disastrous--if
4868 you type `e' meaning to expunge, just turn off editing with C-c C-c
4871 Another new Rmail command is `<', which moves to the first message.
4872 This is for symmetry with `>'.
4874 Use the `b' command to bury the Rmail buffer and its summary buffer,
4875 if any, removing both of them from display on the screen.
4877 The variable `rmail-output-file-alist' now controls the default
4878 for the file to output a message to.
4880 In the Rmail summary buffer, all cursor motion commands select
4881 the message you move to. It's really neat when you use
4884 You can now issue most Rmail commands from an Rmail summary buffer.
4885 The commands do the same thing in that buffer that they do in the
4886 Rmail buffer. They apply to the message that is selected in the Rmail
4887 buffer, which is always the one described by the current summary
4890 Conversely, motion and deletion commands in the Rmail buffer also
4891 update the summary buffer. If you set the variable
4892 `rmail-redisplay-summary' to a non-nil value, then they bring the
4893 summary buffer (if one exists) back onto the screen.
4895 C-M-t is a new command to make a summary by topic. It uses regexp
4896 matching against just the subjects of the messages to decide which
4897 messages to show in the summary.
4899 You can easily convert an Rmail file to system mailbox format with the
4900 command `unrmail'. This command reads two arguments, the name of
4901 the Rmail file to convert, and the name of the new mailbox file.
4902 (This command does not change the Rmail file itself.)
4904 Rmail now handles Content Length fields in messages.
4906 *** `mail-extract-address-components' unpacks mail addresses.
4907 It takes an address as a string (the contents of the From field, for
4908 example) and returns a list of the form (FULL-NAME
4911 *** Changes in C mode and C-related commands.
4913 **** M-x c-up-conditional
4915 In C mode, `c-up-conditional' moves back to the containing
4916 preprocessor conditional, setting the mark where point was
4919 A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument,
4920 this command moves forward to the end of the containing preprocessor
4921 conditional. When going backwards, `#elif' acts like `#else' followed
4922 by `#if'. When going forwards, `#elif' is ignored.
4924 **** In C mode, M-a and M-e are now defined as
4925 `c-beginning-of-statement' and `c-end-of-statement'.
4927 **** In C mode, M-x c-backslash-region is a new command to insert or
4928 align `\' characters at the ends of the lines of the region, except
4929 for the last such line. This is useful after writing or editing a C
4932 If a line already ends in `\', this command adjusts the amount of
4933 whitespace before it. Otherwise, it inserts a new `\'.
4935 *** New features in info.
4937 When Info looks for an Info file, it searches the directories
4938 in `Info-directory-list'. This makes it easy to install the Info files
4939 that come with various packages. You can specify the path with
4940 the environment variable INFOPATH.
4942 There are new commands in Info mode.
4944 `]' now moves forward a node, going up and down levels as needed.
4945 `[' is similar but moves backward. These two commands try to traverse
4946 the entire Info tree, node by node. They are the equivalent of reading
4947 a printed manual sequentially.
4949 `<' moves to the top node of the current Info file.
4950 `>' moves to the last node of the file.
4952 SPC scrolls through the current node; at the end, it advances to the
4953 next node in depth-first order (like `]').
4955 DEL scrolls backwards in the current node; at the end, it moves to the
4956 previous node in depth-first order (like `[').
4958 After a menu select, the info `up' command now restores point in the
4959 menu. The combination of this and the previous two changes means that
4960 repeated SPC keystrokes do the right (depth-first traverse forward) thing.
4962 `i STRING RET' moves to the node associated with STRING in the index
4963 or indices of this manual. If there is more than one match for
4964 STRING, the `i' command finds the first match.
4966 `,' finds the next match for the string in the previous `i' command
4968 If you click the middle mouse button near a cross-reference,
4969 menu item or node pointer while in Info, you will go to the node
4970 which is referenced.
4972 *** Changes in M-x compile.
4974 You can repeat any previous compilation command conveniently using the
4975 minibuffer history commands, while in the minibuffer entering the
4976 compilation command.
4978 While a compilation is going on, the string `Compiling' appears in
4979 the mode line. When this string disappears, that tells you the
4980 compilation is finished.
4982 The buffer of compiler messages is in Compilation mode. This mode
4983 provides the keys SPC and DEL to scroll by screenfuls, and M-n and M-p
4984 to move to the next or previous error message. You can also use C-c
4985 C-c on any error message to find the corresponding source code.
4987 Emacs 19 has a more general parser for compiler messages. For example, it
4988 can understand messages from lint, and from certain C compilers whose error
4989 message format is unusual. Also, it only parses until it sees the error
4990 message you want; you never have to wait a long time to see the first
4991 error, no matter how big the buffer is.
4993 *** M-x diff and M-x diff-backup.
4995 This new command compares two files, displaying the differences in an
4996 Emacs buffer. The options for the `diff' program come from the
4997 variable `diff-switches', whose value should be a string.
4999 The buffer of differences has Compilation mode as its major mode, so you
5000 can use C-x ` to visit successive changed locations in the two
5001 source files, or you can move to a particular hunk of changes and type
5002 C-c C-c to move to the corresponding source. You can also use the
5003 other special commands of Compilation mode: SPC and DEL for
5004 scrolling, and M-n and M-p for cursor motion.
5006 M-x diff-backup compares a file with its most recent backup.
5007 If you specify the name of a backup file, `diff-backup' compares it
5008 with the source file that it is a backup of.
5010 *** The View commands (such as M-x view-buffer and M-x view-file) no
5011 longer use recursive edits; instead, they switch temporarily to a
5012 different major mode (View mode) specifically designed for moving
5013 around through a buffer without editing it.
5015 *** Changes in incremental search.
5017 **** The character to terminate an incremental search is now RET.
5018 This is for compatibility with the way most other arguments are read.
5020 To search for a newline in an incremental search, type LFD (also known
5023 **** Incremental search now maintains a ring of previous search
5024 strings. Use M-p and M-n to move through the ring to pick a search
5025 string to reuse. These commands leave the selected search ring
5026 element in the minibuffer, where you can edit it. Type C-s or C-r to
5027 finish editing and search for the chosen string.
5029 **** If you type an upper case letter in incremental search, that turns
5030 off case-folding, so that you get a case-sensitive search.
5032 **** If you type a space during regexp incremental search, it matches
5033 any sequence of whitespace characters. If you want to match just a space,
5036 **** Incremental search is now implemented as a major mode. When you
5037 type C-s, it switches temporarily to a different keymap which defines
5038 each key to do what it ought to do for incremental search. This has
5039 next to no effect on the user-visible behavior of searching, but makes
5040 it easier to customize that behavior.
5042 Emacs 19 eliminates the old variables `search-...-char' that used to
5043 be the way to specify the characters to use for various special
5044 purposes in incremental search. Instead, you can define the meaning
5045 of a character in incremental search by modifying `isearch-mode-map'.
5047 *** New commands in Buffer Menu mode.
5049 The command C-o now displays the current line's buffer in another
5050 window but does not select it. This is like the existing command `o'
5051 which selects the current line's buffer in another window.
5053 The command % toggles the read-only flag of the current line's buffer.
5055 The way to switch to a set of several buffers, including those marked
5056 with m, is now v. The q command simply quits, replacing the buffer
5057 menu buffer with the buffer that was displayed previously.
5059 ** New major modes and packages.
5061 *** The news reader GNUS is now installed.
5063 *** There is a new interface for version control systems, called VC.
5064 It works with both RCS and SCCS; in fact, you don't really have to
5065 know which one of them is being used, because it automatically deals
5068 Most of the time, the only command you have to know about is C-x C-q.
5069 This command normally toggles the read-only flag of the current
5070 buffer. If the buffer is visiting a file that is maintained with a
5071 version control system, the command still toggles read-only, but does
5072 so by checking the file in or checking it out.
5074 When you check a file in, VC asks you for a log entry by popping up a
5075 buffer. Edit the entry there, then type C-c C-c when it is ready.
5076 That's when the actual checkin happens. If you change your mind about
5077 the checkin, simply switch buffers and don't ever go back to the log
5080 To start using version control for a file, use the command C-x v v.
5081 This works like C-x C-q (performing the next logical version-control
5082 operation needed to change the file's writability) but it will also
5083 perform initial checkin on an unregistered file.
5085 By default, VC uses RCS if RCS is installed on your machine;
5086 otherwise, SCCS. If you want to make the choice explicitly, you can do
5087 it by setting `vc-default-back-end' to the symbol `RCS' or the symbol
5090 You can tell when a file you visit is maintained with version control
5091 because either `RCS' or `SCCS' appears in the mode line.
5093 *** A new Calendar mode has been added, the work of Edward M. Reingold.
5094 The mode can display the Gregorian calendar and a variety of other
5095 calendars at any date, and interacts with a diary facility similar to
5096 the UNIX `calendar' utility.
5098 *** There is a new major mode for editing binary files: Hexl mode.
5099 To use it, use M-x hexl-find-file instead of C-x C-f to visit the file.
5100 This command converts the file's contents to hexadecimal and lets you
5101 edit the translation. When you save the file, it is converted
5102 automatically back to binary.
5104 You can also use M-x hexl-mode to translate an existing buffer into hex.
5105 Do this if you have already visited a binary file.
5107 Hexl mode has a few other commands:
5109 C-M-d insert a byte with a code typed in decimal.
5110 C-M-o insert a byte with a code typed in octal.
5111 C-M-x insert a byte with a code typed in hex.
5113 C-x [ move to the beginning of a 1k-byte "page".
5114 C-x ] move to the end of a 1k-byte "page".
5116 M-g go to an address specified in hex.
5117 M-j go to an address specified in decimal.
5119 C-c C-c leave hexl mode and go back to the previous major mode.
5121 *** Miscellaneous new major modes include Awk mode, Icon mode, Makefile
5122 mode, Perl mode and SGML mode.
5124 *** Edebug, a new source-level debugger for Emacs Lisp functions.
5126 To use Edebug, use the command M-x edebug-defun to "evaluate" a
5127 function definition in an Emacs Lisp file. We put "evaluate" in
5128 quotation marks because it doesn't just evaluate the function, it also
5129 inserts additional information to support source-level debugging.
5133 (setq debugger 'edebug-debug)
5135 to cause errors and single-stepping to use Edebug instead of the usual
5136 Emacs Lisp debugger.
5138 For more information, see the Edebug manual, which should be included
5139 in the Emacs distribution.
5141 *** C++ mode is like C mode, except that it understands C++ comment syntax
5142 and certain other differences between C and C++. It also has a command
5143 `fill-c++-comment' which fills a paragraph made of comment lines.
5145 The command `comment-region' is useful in C++ mode for commenting out
5146 several consecutive lines, or removing the commenting out of such lines.
5148 *** A new package for merging two variants of the same text.
5150 It's not unusual for programmers to get their signals crossed and
5151 modify the same program in two different directions. Then somebody
5152 has to merge the two versions. The command `emerge-files' makes this
5155 `emerge-files' reads two file names and compares them. Then it
5156 displays three buffers: one for each file, and one for the
5159 If the original version of the file is available, you can make things
5160 even easier using `emerge-files-with-ancestor'. It reads three file
5161 names--variant 1, variant 2, and the common ancestor--and uses diff3
5164 You control the merging interactively. The main loop of Emerge
5165 consists of showing you one set of differences, asking you what to do
5166 about them, and doing it. You have a choice of two modes for giving
5167 directions to Emerge: "fast" mode and "edit" mode.
5169 In Fast mode, Emerge commands are single characters, and ordinary
5170 Emacs commands are disabled. This makes Emerge operations fast, but
5171 prevents you from doing more than selecting the A or the B version of
5172 differences. In Edit mode, all emerge commands use the C-c prefix,
5173 and the usual Emacs commands are available. This allows editing the
5174 merge buffer, but slows down Emerge operations. Edit and fast modes
5175 are indicated by `F' and `E' in the minor modes in the mode line.
5177 The Emerge commands are:
5179 p go to the previous difference
5180 n go to the next difference
5181 a select the A version of this difference
5182 b select the B version of this difference
5183 j go to a particular difference (prefix argument
5184 specifies which difference) (0j suppresses display of
5186 q quit - finish the merge*
5189 l recenter (C-l) all three windows*
5191 prefix numeric arguments
5192 d a select the A version as the default from here down in
5194 d b select the B version as the default from here down in
5196 c a copy the A version of the difference into the kill
5198 c b copy the B version of the difference into the kill
5200 i a insert the A version of the difference at the point
5201 i b insert the B version of the difference at the point
5202 m put the point and mark around the difference region
5203 ^ scroll-down (like M-v) the three windows*
5204 v scroll-up (like C-v) the three windows*
5205 < scroll-left (like C-x <) the three windows*
5206 > scroll-right (like C-x >) the three windows*
5207 | reset horizontal scroll on the three windows*
5208 x 1 shrink the merge window to one line (use C-u l to restore it
5210 x a find the difference containing a location in the A buffer*
5211 x b find the difference containing a location in the B buffer*
5212 x c combine the two versions of this difference*
5213 x C combine the two versions of this difference, using a
5214 register's value as the template*
5215 x d find the difference containing a location in the merge buffer*
5216 x f show the files/buffers Emerge is operating on in Help window
5217 (use C-u l to restore windows)
5218 x j join this difference with the following one
5219 (C-u x j joins this difference with the previous one)
5220 x l show line numbers of points in A, B, and merge buffers
5221 x m change major mode of merge buffer*
5222 x s split this difference into two differences
5223 (first position the point in all three buffers to the places
5224 to split the difference)
5225 x t trim identical lines off top and bottom of difference
5226 (such lines occur when the A and B versions are
5227 identical but differ from the ancestor version)
5228 x x set the template for the x c command*
5230 Normally, the merged output goes back in the first file specified.
5231 If you use a prefix argument, Emerge reads another file name to use
5232 for the output file.
5234 Once Emerge has prepared the buffer of differences, it runs the hooks
5235 in `emerge-startup-hooks'.
5237 *** Asm mode is a new major mode for editing files of assembler code.
5238 It defines these commands:
5240 TAB tab-to-tab-stop.
5241 LFD Insert a newline and then indent using tab-to-tab-stop.
5242 : Insert a colon and then remove the indentation
5243 from before the label preceding colon. Then tab-to-tab-stop.
5244 ; Insert or align a comment.
5246 *** Two-column mode lets you conveniently edit two side-by-side columns
5247 of text. It works using two side-by-side windows, each showing its
5250 Here are three ways to enter two-column mode:
5252 C-x 6 2 makes the current buffer into the left-hand buffer. In the
5253 right-hand window it puts a buffer whose name is based on the current
5256 C-x 6 b BUFFER RET makes the current buffer into the left-hand buffer,
5257 and uses buffer BUFFER as the right-hand buffer.
5259 C-x 6 s splits the current buffer, which contains two-column text,
5260 into two side-by-side buffers. The old current buffer becomes the
5261 left-hand buffer, but the text in the right column is moved into the
5262 right-hand buffer. The current column specifies the split point.
5263 Splitting starts with the current line and continues to the end of the
5266 C-x 6 s takes a prefix argument which specifies how many characters
5267 before point constitute the column separator. (The default argument
5268 is 1, as usual, so by default the column separator is the character
5269 before point.) Lines that don't have the column separator at the
5270 proper place remain unsplit; they stay in the left-hand buffer, and
5271 the right-hand buffer gets an empty line to correspond.
5273 You can scroll both buffers together using C-x 6 SPC (scroll up), C-x
5274 6 DEL (scroll down), and C-x 6 RET (scroll up one line). C-x 6 C-l
5275 recenters both buffers together.
5277 If you want to make a line which will span both columns, put it in
5278 the left-hand buffer, with an empty line in the corresponding place in
5279 the right-hand buffer.
5281 When you have edited both buffers as you wish, merge them with C-x 6
5282 1. This copies the text from the right-hand buffer as a second column
5283 in the other buffer. To go back to two-column editing, use C-x 6 s.
5285 Use C-x 6 d to disassociate the two buffers, leaving each as it
5286 stands. (If the other buffer, the one that was not current when you
5287 type C-x 6 d, is empty, C-x 6 d kills it.)
5289 *** You can supply command arguments such as files to visit to an Emacs
5290 that is already running. To do this, you must do this in your .emacs
5292 (add-hook 'suspend-hook 'resume-suspend-hook)
5293 Also you must use the shellscript emacs.csh or emacs.sh, found in the
5296 *** Shell mode has been completely replaced.
5297 The basic idea is the same, but there are new commands available in
5300 TAB now completes the file name before point in the shell buffer.
5301 To get a list of all possible completions, type M-?.
5303 There is a new convenient history mechanism for repeating previous
5304 commands. Use the command M-p to recall the last command; it copies
5305 the text of that command to the place where you are editing. If you
5306 repeat M-p, it replaces the copied command with the previous command.
5307 M-n is similar but goes in the opposite direction towards the present.
5308 When you find the command you wanted, you can edit it, or just
5309 resubmit it by typing RET.
5311 You can also use M-r and M-s to search for (respectively) earlier or
5312 later inputs starting with a given string. First type the string,
5313 then type M-r to yank a previous input from the history which starts
5314 with that string. You can repeat M-r to find successively earlier
5315 inputs starting with the same string. You can start moving in the
5316 opposite direction (toward more recent inputs) by typing M-s instead
5317 of M-r. As long as you don't use any commands except M-r and M-s,
5318 they keep using the same string that you had entered initially.
5320 C-c C-o kills the last batch of output from a shell command. This is
5321 useful if a shell command spews out lots of output that just gets in
5324 C-c C-r scrolls to display the beginning of the last batch of output
5325 at the top of the window; it also moves the cursor there.
5327 C-a on a line that starts with a shell prompt moves to the end of the
5328 prompt, not to the very beginning of the line.
5330 C-d typed at the end of the shell buffer sends EOF to the subshell.
5331 At any other position in the buffer, it deletes a character as usual.
5333 If Emacs gets confused while trying to track changes in the shell's
5334 current directory, type M-x dirs to re-synchronize.
5336 M-x send-invisible reads a line of text without echoing it, and
5337 sends it to the shell.
5339 If you accidentally suspend your process, use M-x comint-continue-subjob
5342 *** There is now a convenient way to enable flow control on terminals
5343 where you can't win without it. Suppose you want to do this on
5344 VT-100 and H19 terminals; put the following in your `.emacs' file:
5346 (enable-flow-control-on "vt100" "h19")
5348 When flow control is enabled, you must type C-\ to get the effect of a
5349 C-s, and type C-^ to get the effect of a C-q.
5351 The function `enable-flow-control' enables flow control unconditionally.
5355 Dired has many new features which allow you to do these things:
5357 - Rename, copy, or make links to many files at once.
5359 - Make distinguishable types of marks for different operations.
5361 - Display contents of subdirectories in the same Dired buffer as the
5364 *** Setting and Clearing Marks
5366 There are now two kinds of marker that you can put on a file in Dired:
5367 `D' for deletion, and `*' for any other kind of operation.
5368 The `x' command deletes only files marked with `D', and most
5369 other Dired commands operate only on the files marked with `*'.
5371 To mark files with `D' (also called "flagging" the files), you
5372 can use `d' as usual. Here are some commands for marking with
5373 `*' (and also for unmarking):
5375 **** `m' marks the current file with `*', for an operation other than
5378 **** `*' marks all executable files. With a prefix argument, it
5379 unmarks all those files.
5381 **** `@' marks all symbolic links. With a prefix argument, it unmarks
5384 **** `/' marks all directory files except `.' and `..'. With a prefix
5385 argument, it unmarks all those files.
5387 **** M-DEL removes a specific or all marks from every file. With an
5388 argument, queries for each marked file. Type your help character,
5389 usually C-h, at that time for help.
5391 **** `c' replaces all marks that use the character OLD with marks that
5392 use the character NEW. You can use almost any character as a mark
5393 character by means of this command, to distinguish various classes of
5394 files. If OLD is ` ', then the command operates on all unmarked
5395 files; if NEW is ` ', then the command unmarks the files it acts on.
5397 *** Operating on Multiple Files
5399 The Dired commands to operate directly on files (rename them, copy
5400 them, and so on) have been generalized to work on multiple files.
5401 There are also some additional commands in this series.
5403 All of these commands use the same convention to decide which files to
5406 - If you give the command a numeric prefix argument @var{n}, it operates
5407 on the next @var{n} files, starting with the current file.
5409 - Otherwise, if there are marked files, the commands operate on all the
5412 - Otherwise, the command operates on the current file only.
5414 These are the commands:
5416 **** `C' copies the specified files. You must specify a directory to
5417 copy into, or (if copying a single file) a new name.
5419 If `dired-copy-preserve-time' is non-`nil', then copying sets
5420 the modification time of the new file to be the same as that of the old
5423 **** `R' renames the specified files. You must specify a directory to
5424 rename into, or (if renaming a single file) a new name.
5426 Dired automatically changes the visited file name of buffers associated
5427 with renamed files so that they refer to the new names.
5429 **** `H' makes hard links to the specified files. You must specify a
5430 directory to make the links in, or (if making just one link) the name
5433 **** `S' makes symbolic links to the specified files. You must specify
5434 a directory to make the links in, or (if making just one link) the
5435 name to give the link.
5437 **** `M' changes the mode of the specified files. This calls the
5438 `chmod' program, so you can describe the desired mode change with any
5439 argument that `chmod' would handle.
5441 **** `G' changes the group of the specified files.
5443 **** `O' changes the owner of the specified files. (On normal systems,
5444 only the superuser can do this.)
5446 The variable `dired-chown-program' specifies the name of the
5447 program to use to do the work (different systems put `chown' in
5450 **** `Z' compresses or uncompresses the specified files.
5452 **** `L' loads the specified Emacs Lisp files.
5454 **** `B' byte compiles the specified Emacs Lisp files.
5456 **** `P' prints the specified files. It uses the variables
5457 `lpr-command' and `lpr-switches' just as `lpr-file' does.
5459 *** Shell Commands in Dired
5461 `!' reads a shell command string in the minibuffer and runs the shell
5462 command on all the specified files. There are two ways of applying a
5463 shell command to multiple files:
5465 - If you use `*' in the command, then the shell command runs just
5466 once, with the list of file names substituted for the `*'.
5468 Thus, `! tar cf foo.tar * RET' runs `tar' on the entire list of file
5469 names, putting them into one tar file `foo.tar'. The file names are
5470 inserted in the order that they appear in the Dired buffer.
5472 - If the command string doesn't contain `*', then it runs once for
5473 each file, with the file name attached at the end. For example, `!
5474 uudecode RET' runs `uudecode' on each file.
5476 To run the shell command once for each file but without being limited
5477 to putting the file name inserted in the middle, use a shell loop.
5478 For example, this shell command would run `uuencode' on each of the
5479 specified files, writing the output into a corresponding `.uu' file:
5481 for file in *; uuencode $file $file >$file.uu; done
5483 The working directory for the shell command is the top level directory
5484 of the Dired buffer.
5486 *** Regular Expression File Name Substitution
5488 **** `% m REGEXP RET' marks all files whose names match the regular
5491 Only the non-directory part of the file name is used in matching. Use
5492 `^' and `$' to anchor matches. Exclude subdirs by hiding them.
5494 **** `% d REGEXP RET' flags for deletion all files whose names match
5495 the regular expression REGEXP.
5497 **** `% R', `% C', `% H', `% S'
5499 These four commands rename, copy, make hard links and make soft links,
5500 in each case computing the new name by regular expression substitution
5501 from the name of the old file. They effectively perform
5502 `query-replace-regexp' on the selected file names in the Dired buffer.
5504 The commands read two arguments: a regular expression, and a
5505 substitution pattern. Each selected file name is matched against the
5506 regular expression, and then the part which matched is replaced with
5507 the substitution pattern. You can use `\&' and `\DIGIT' in the
5508 substitution pattern to refer to all or part of the old file name.
5510 If the regular expression matches more than once in a file name,
5511 only the first match is replaced.
5513 Normally, the replacement process does not consider the directory names;
5514 it operates on the file name within the directory. If you specify a
5515 prefix argument of zero, then replacement affects entire file name.
5517 To apply the command to all files matching the same regexp that you
5518 use in the command, mark those files with `% m REGEXP RET', then use
5519 the same regular expression in `% R'. To make this easier, `% R' uses
5520 as a default the last regular expression specified in a `%' command.
5522 *** Dired Case Conversion
5524 **** `% u' renames each of the selected files to an upper case name.
5526 **** `% l' renames each of the selected files to a lower case name.
5528 *** File Comparison with Dired
5530 **** `=' compares the current file with another file (the file at the
5531 mark), by running the `diff' program. The file at the mark is given
5534 **** `M-=' compares the current file with its backup file. If there
5535 are several numerical backups, it uses the most recent one. If this
5536 file is a backup, it is compared with its original.
5538 The backup file is the first file given to `diff'.
5540 *** Subdirectories in Dired
5542 You can display more than one directory in one Dired buffer.
5543 The simplest way to do this is to specify the options `-lR' for
5544 running `ls'. That produces a recursive directory listing showing
5545 all subdirectories, all within the same Dired buffer.
5547 You can also insert the contents of a particular subdirectory with the
5548 `i' command. Use this command on the line that describes a file which
5549 is a directory. Inserted subdirectory contents follow the top-level
5550 directory of the Dired buffer, just as they do in `ls -lR' output.
5552 If the subdirectory's contents are already present in the buffer, the
5553 `i' command just moves to it (type `l' to refresh it). It sets the
5554 Emacs mark before moving, so C-x C-x takes you back to the old
5555 position in the buffer.
5557 When you have subdirectories in the Dired buffer, you can use the page
5558 motion commands C-x [ and C-x ] to move by entire directories.
5560 The following commands move up and down in the tree of directories
5561 in one Dired buffer:
5563 **** C-M-u Go up to the parent directory's headerline.
5565 **** C-M-d Go down in the tree, to the first subdirectory's
5568 **** C-M-n Go to next subdirectory headerline, regardless of level.
5570 **** C-M-p Go to previous subdirectory headerline, regardless of
5573 *** Hiding Subdirectories
5575 "Hiding" a subdirectory means to make it invisible, except for its
5576 headerline. Files inside a hidden subdirectory are never considered
5577 by Dired. For example, the commands to operate on marked files ignore
5578 files in hidden directories even if they are marked.
5580 **** `$' hides or unhides the current subdirectory and move to next
5581 subdirectory. A prefix argument serves as a repeat count.
5583 **** `M-$' hides all subdirectories, leaving only their header lines.
5584 Or, if at least one subdirectory is currently hidden, it makes
5585 everything visible again. You can use this command to get an overview
5586 in very deep directory trees or to move quickly to subdirectories far
5589 *** Editing the Dired Buffer
5591 **** `l' updates the specified files in a Dired buffer. This means
5592 reading their current status from the file system and changing the
5593 buffer to reflect it properly.
5595 If you use this command on a subdirectory header line, it updates the
5596 contents of the subdirectory.
5598 **** `g' updates the entire contents of the Dired buffer. It preserves
5599 all marks except for those on files that have vanished. Hidden
5600 subdirectories are updated but remain hidden.
5602 **** `k' kills all marked lines (not the files). With a prefix
5603 argument, it kills that many lines starting with the current line.
5605 This command does not delete files; it just deletes text from the Dired
5608 If you kill the line for a file that is a directory, then its contents
5609 are also deleted from the buffer. Typing `C-u k' on the header line
5610 for a subdirectory is another way to delete a subdirectory from the
5613 *** `find' and Dired.
5615 To search for files with names matching a wildcard pattern use
5616 `find-name-dired'. Its arguments are DIRECTORY and
5617 PATTERN. It selects all the files in DIRECTORY or its
5618 subdirectories whose own names match PATTERN.
5620 The files thus selected are displayed in a Dired buffer in which the
5621 ordinary Dired commands are available.
5623 If you want to test the contents of files, rather than their names, use
5624 `find-grep-dired'. This command takes two minibuffer arguments,
5625 DIRECTORY and REGEXP; it selects all the files in
5626 DIRECTORY or its subdirectories that contain a match for
5627 REGEXP. It works by running `find' and `grep'.
5629 The most general command in this series is `find-dired', which lets
5630 you specify any condition that `find' can test. It takes two
5631 minibuffer arguments, DIRECTORY and FIND-ARGS; it runs `find' in
5632 DIRECTORY with using FIND-ARGS as the arguments to `find' specifying
5633 which files to accept. To use this command, you need to know how to
5636 ** New amusements and novelties.
5638 *** `M-x mpuz' displays a multiplication puzzle, in which each letter
5639 stands for a digit, and you must determine which digit. The puzzles
5640 are determined randomly, so they are always different.
5642 *** `M-x gomoku' plays the game Gomoku with you. It needs more work.
5644 *** `M-x spook' adds a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing
5645 mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that
5646 suggest you are discussing something subversive.
5648 The idea is that the NSA reads all messages that contain keywords
5649 suggesting they might be interested, and that adding these lines could
5650 help to overload them. I would guess that they have modified their
5651 program by now to ignore these lines of keywords; perhaps the program
5652 can be updated if some clever hacker can determine what criterion they
5655 ** Installation changes
5657 *** The configure script has been provided to help with the
5658 installation process. It takes the place of editing the Makefiles and
5659 src/config.h, and can often guess the appropriate operating system to
5660 use for a particular machine type. See INSTALL for a more detailed
5661 description of the steps required for installation.
5663 *** If you create a Lisp file named `site-start.el', Emacs loads the file
5664 whenever it starts up.
5666 *** A new Lisp variable, `data-directory', indicates the directory
5667 containing the DOC file, tutorial, copying agreement, and other
5668 familiar `etc' files. The value of `data-directory' is a simple string.
5669 The default should be set at build time, and the person installing
5670 Emacs should place all the data files in this directory. The `help.el'
5671 functions that look for docstrings and information files check this
5672 variable. All Emacs Lisp packages should also be coded so that they
5673 refer to `data-directory' to find data files.
5675 *** The PURESIZE definition has been moved from config.h to its own
5676 file, puresize.h. Since almost every file of C source in the
5677 distribution depends on config.h, but only alloc.c and data.c depend
5678 on puresize.h, this means that changing the value of PURESIZE causes
5679 only those two files to be recompiled.
5681 *** The makefile at the top of the Emacs source tree now supports a
5682 `dist' target, which creates a compressed tar file suitable for
5683 distribution, using the contents of the source tree. Object files,
5684 old file versions, executables, DOC files, and other
5685 architecture-specific or easy-to-recreate files are not included in
5688 * For older news, see the file OONEWS. For Lisp changes in (the first
5689 * release of) Emacs 19, see the file LNEWS.
5691 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
5692 Copyright information:
5694 Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5696 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
5697 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
5698 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
5699 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
5701 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
5702 of this document, or of portions of it,
5703 under the above conditions, provided also that they
5704 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
5708 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"