1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
14 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
16 ** Faces and frame parameters.
18 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
19 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
20 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
21 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
22 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
23 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
24 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
26 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
27 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
28 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
29 `default' face and vice versa.
33 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
34 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
35 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
37 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
39 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
40 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
41 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
42 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
44 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
45 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
46 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
48 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
51 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
53 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
54 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
55 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
56 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
59 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
61 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
62 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
63 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
64 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
67 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
68 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
69 under Lisp changes, below.
71 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
73 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
74 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
77 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
78 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
79 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
80 customizing face `fringe'.
82 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
83 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
87 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
88 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
90 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
92 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
93 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
94 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
95 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
96 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
99 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
100 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
101 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
102 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
103 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
104 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
106 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
107 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
108 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
109 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
110 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
111 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
113 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
114 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
115 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
116 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
117 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
119 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
121 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
122 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
123 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
125 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
127 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
128 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
129 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
130 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
131 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
136 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
137 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
141 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
142 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
143 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
146 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
148 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
149 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
150 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
153 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
154 have to do anything to activate it.
156 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
158 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
159 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
160 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
161 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
163 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
165 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
167 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
169 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the Motif
172 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, like in
175 ** Hscrolling in C code.
177 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically.
181 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
182 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
184 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
186 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
187 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
188 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
189 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
190 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
192 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
194 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
197 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
198 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
200 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
202 - Mouse-1 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
203 toggles the read-only status.
205 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
207 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
209 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
210 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialogs' is
213 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
215 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
216 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
217 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
218 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
219 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
220 attributes like overlines, strike-throught, box are ignored.
224 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
225 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
226 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
227 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
228 to enable sound support.
230 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
231 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
232 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
233 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
234 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
235 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
237 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
239 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
241 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
242 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
243 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
245 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
246 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
248 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
249 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
250 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
252 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
254 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
255 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
256 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
257 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
259 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
260 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
261 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
262 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
264 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
265 notably at the end of lines.
267 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
268 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
270 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
271 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
272 after each match to get the replacement text.
274 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
276 If a message is longer than one line, or mini-buffer contents are
277 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the mini-window unless it is
278 on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum mini-window size
279 by setting the following variable:
281 - User option: max-mini-window-height
283 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
284 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
285 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
289 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
291 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
292 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
293 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
294 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
295 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
296 can be edited from that buffer.
298 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
299 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
300 `A' to use all marked entries).
302 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
303 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
305 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
306 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
307 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
310 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
311 has the following new features:
313 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
314 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
315 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
316 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
318 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
319 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
320 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
321 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
322 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
327 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
328 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
329 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
331 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
332 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
333 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
334 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
338 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
339 `State' menu to add comments.
341 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
342 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
345 ** New features in evaluation commands
347 The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
348 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
349 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
350 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
351 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
353 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
354 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
355 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
360 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
361 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
362 is, delete only empty directories.
364 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
365 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
366 copy directories recursively.
368 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
369 use the -f option when sending mail.
371 ** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
372 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
374 ** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
375 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
376 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
378 ** Shell script mode changes.
380 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
381 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
382 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
384 ** New modes and packages
386 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
388 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
390 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
392 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
395 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
398 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
400 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
402 *** whitespace.el ???
404 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
405 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
406 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
407 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
408 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
409 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
410 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
412 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
414 Here is an example of columns:
417 dog pineapple car EXTRA
418 porcupine strawberry airplane
420 Doing the following settings:
422 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
423 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
424 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
425 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
428 Selecting the lines above and typing:
430 M-x delimit-columns-region
434 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
435 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
436 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
438 delim-col has the following options:
440 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
443 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
446 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
449 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
452 delim-col has the following commands:
454 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
455 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
457 ** Withdrawn packages
459 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
460 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
462 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
464 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
465 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
466 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
467 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
469 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
470 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
472 ** New function `propertize'
474 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
475 strings with text properties.
477 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
479 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
480 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
481 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
482 specified value of that property. Example:
484 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
487 ** push and pop macros.
489 A simple version of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
490 is now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
491 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
493 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
494 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
495 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
498 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
499 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
501 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
502 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
503 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
504 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
505 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
507 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
509 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
510 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
511 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
512 [:alpha:] matches letters.
513 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
514 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
515 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
516 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
517 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
518 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
519 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
520 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
521 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
522 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
523 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
526 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
528 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
530 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
532 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
533 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
537 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
538 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
539 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
543 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
544 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
546 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
548 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
549 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
550 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
551 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
552 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
554 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
556 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
557 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
558 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
562 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value', or t.
563 Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage collection if
564 their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere outside of the
565 hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
567 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
569 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
571 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
573 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
575 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
577 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
580 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
582 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
584 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
586 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
588 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
590 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
592 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
594 Returns the size of TABLE.
596 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
598 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
600 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
602 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
604 - Function: clrhash TABLE
608 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
610 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
613 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
615 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
616 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
618 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
620 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
622 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
624 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
625 arguments KEY and VALUE.
627 - Function: sxhash OBJ
629 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
631 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
633 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
634 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
635 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
636 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
637 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
639 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
641 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
642 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
643 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
645 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
646 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
648 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
649 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
651 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
654 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
655 'case-fold-string-hash))
657 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
660 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
662 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
663 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
664 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
667 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
669 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
670 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
672 You can also do several calls to print functions using a common
673 set of #N= constructs; here is how.
675 (let ((print-circle t)
676 (print-continuous-numbering t)
683 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
684 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
685 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
686 is too short to reach that column.
689 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
690 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
691 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
692 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
694 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
695 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
696 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
699 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
700 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
703 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
704 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
707 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
708 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
709 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
710 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
711 temporary-file-directory instead.
714 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
715 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
716 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
717 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
720 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
721 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
724 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
726 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
727 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
728 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
731 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
733 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
734 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
735 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
736 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
737 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
738 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
740 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
741 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
742 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
743 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
746 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
748 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
749 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
750 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
753 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
754 string where arguments appear in the result string.
758 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
760 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
761 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
764 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
767 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
769 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
770 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
773 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
775 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
776 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
782 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
783 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
785 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
786 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
787 to enable sound support.
789 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
790 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
791 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
792 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
793 sound to play, before playing the sound.
795 The following sound properties are supported:
799 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
800 searched relative to `data-directory'.
804 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
805 0..1. This property is optional.
807 Other properties are ignored.
809 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
811 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
813 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
814 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
815 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
816 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
818 ** New face implementation.
820 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
821 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
826 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
828 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
830 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
831 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
833 3. Font height in 1/10pt
835 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
837 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
843 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
845 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
847 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
849 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
851 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
854 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
855 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
857 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
858 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
859 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
860 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
861 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
862 attributes mentioned above.
864 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
865 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
868 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
869 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
875 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
876 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
877 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
878 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
879 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
880 results in a fully-specified face.
883 *** Face realization.
885 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
886 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
887 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
888 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
889 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
890 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
892 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
893 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
894 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
895 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
897 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
898 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
899 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
900 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
901 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
903 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
904 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
905 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
906 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
907 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
910 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
911 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
912 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
913 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
916 **** Clearing face caches.
918 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
919 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
925 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
926 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
927 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
929 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
930 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
931 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
932 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
933 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
935 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
936 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
937 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
939 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
941 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
942 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
943 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
944 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
945 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
946 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
947 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
949 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
950 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
956 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
957 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
960 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
961 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means nver use
962 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
963 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
964 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
967 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
969 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
972 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
974 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
976 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
977 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
978 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
980 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
981 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
982 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
983 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
984 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
985 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
986 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
987 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
988 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
989 of the face font sort order.
991 - Function: x-font-family-list
993 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
994 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
995 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
996 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
998 - Variable: font-list-limit
1000 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
1001 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
1002 matching font. The default is currently 100.
1005 *** Setting face attributes.
1007 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
1008 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
1009 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
1012 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
1013 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
1015 The following attributes are recognized:
1019 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
1020 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
1021 and `?' are allowed.
1025 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
1026 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
1027 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
1028 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
1032 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
1037 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
1038 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
1039 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
1043 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
1044 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
1047 `:foreground', `:background'
1049 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
1053 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
1054 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
1055 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
1060 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
1061 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
1062 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
1067 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
1068 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
1069 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
1070 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
1074 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
1075 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
1076 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
1077 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
1078 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
1079 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
1080 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
1081 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
1082 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
1083 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
1084 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
1085 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
1086 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
1087 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
1088 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
1089 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
1094 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
1095 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
1099 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
1100 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
1101 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
1102 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
1103 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
1104 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
1106 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
1107 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
1111 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
1112 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
1113 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
1116 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
1117 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
1118 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
1120 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
1123 *** Face attributes and X resources
1125 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
1128 Face attribute X resource class
1129 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
1130 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
1131 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
1132 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
1133 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
1134 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
1135 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
1136 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
1137 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
1138 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
1139 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
1140 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
1141 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
1142 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
1143 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
1144 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
1145 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1146 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
1147 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
1148 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
1151 *** Text property `face'.
1153 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
1154 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
1155 specification can be
1157 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
1159 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
1160 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
1161 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
1162 for face attribute names.
1164 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
1165 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
1166 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
1169 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
1171 The function `face-register-tty-color' can be used to define colors
1172 for use on TTY frames. It maps a color name to a color number on the
1173 terminal. Emacs defines a couple of default color mappings by
1174 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
1175 `tty-defined-colors'. The function `face-clear-tty-colors' can be
1176 used to clear the mapping table.
1179 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
1180 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
1182 A number of functions such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
1183 forward-paragraph, and beginning-of-line, stop moving when they
1184 come to the boundary between the prompt and the actual contents.
1185 The function erase-buffer does not delete the prompt.
1187 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
1188 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
1189 Otherwise, it returns zero.
1191 The function buffer-string does not return the portion of the
1192 mini-buffer belonging to the prompt; buffer-substring does.
1197 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
1198 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
1199 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
1200 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
1202 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
1203 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
1204 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
1205 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
1208 IMAGE is an image specification.
1210 *** Image specifications
1212 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
1213 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
1214 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
1215 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'.
1217 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
1221 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, and specifies the percentage
1222 of the image's height to use for its ascent. Default is 50.
1226 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
1227 margin around the image. Default is 0.
1231 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
1236 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
1237 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
1238 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
1239 which is intended to display images "disabled."
1241 `:heuristic-mask BG'
1243 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
1244 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
1245 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
1246 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
1247 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
1248 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
1249 background of the image.
1253 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
1254 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
1255 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
1256 may be present in the image specification.
1259 *** Supported image types
1261 **** XBM, iamge type `xbm'.
1263 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
1264 properties supported are
1268 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
1269 is the frame's foreground.
1273 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
1274 the frame's background color.
1276 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
1277 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
1278 instead of a `:file' property.
1282 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
1286 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
1292 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
1293 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
1295 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
1297 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
1300 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
1302 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
1303 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
1304 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
1305 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
1307 Additional image properties supported are:
1309 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
1311 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
1312 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
1315 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
1316 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
1320 DATA must be a string containing an XPM image. The contents of the
1321 string are of the same format as that of XPM files.
1323 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
1324 to display compressed images.
1326 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
1328 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
1329 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
1332 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
1334 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
1335 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1338 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
1340 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
1341 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1344 **** GIF, image type `gif'
1346 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
1347 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
1349 Additional image properties supported are:
1353 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
1354 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
1356 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
1357 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
1358 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
1361 (defun show-anim (file max)
1362 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
1363 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
1365 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
1368 (let ((img (create-image file nil :index idx)))
1371 (goto-char (point-min))
1372 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
1373 (insert-image img "x"))
1374 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
1376 **** PNG, image type `png'
1378 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
1379 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
1382 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
1384 Additional image properties supported are:
1388 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
1389 integer. This is an required property.
1393 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
1394 must be an integer. This is an required property.
1398 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
1399 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
1400 files. This is an required property.
1402 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
1407 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
1408 which are supported in the current configuration.
1410 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
1411 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
1412 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
1415 *** Simplified image API, image.el
1417 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
1418 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
1419 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
1420 define an image based on available image types. The functions
1421 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
1427 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
1430 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
1431 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
1432 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
1433 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
1434 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
1435 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
1436 of the display margins.
1438 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
1439 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
1440 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
1441 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
1447 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
1448 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
1449 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
1450 that have a `help-echo' property.
1452 The value of the `help-echo' property must be a string. For tool-bar
1453 items, their key definition is used to determine the help to display.
1454 If their definition contains a property `:help FORM', FORM is
1455 evaluated to determine the help string. Otherwise, the caption of the
1456 tool-bar item is used.
1458 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
1459 help differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window causes the
1460 help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
1463 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
1465 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
1466 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
1468 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
1469 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
1470 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
1471 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
1474 (global-set-key [A-down]
1477 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1478 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
1479 (global-set-key [A-up]
1482 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
1483 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
1486 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
1488 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
1489 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
1490 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
1491 is called with one argument, POS.
1493 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
1494 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
1495 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
1496 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
1497 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
1500 ** Tool bar support.
1502 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
1503 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
1504 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
1505 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
1506 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
1507 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
1509 *** Tool bar item definitions
1511 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
1512 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
1513 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
1515 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
1516 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
1517 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
1518 property (see below).
1520 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
1521 binding are currently ignored.
1523 The following properties are recognized:
1527 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
1532 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
1536 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
1537 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
1538 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
1540 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
1542 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
1543 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
1547 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
1548 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
1549 meaning of each of the four elements:
1551 Index Use when item is
1552 ----------------------------------------
1553 0 enabled and selected
1554 1 enabled and deselected
1555 2 disabled and selected
1556 3 disabled and deselected
1558 `:help HELP-STRING'.
1560 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
1561 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
1563 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
1565 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
1566 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
1567 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
1569 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
1570 raised when the mouse moves over them.
1572 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
1573 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
1574 pixels. Default is 1.
1576 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
1577 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
1579 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
1581 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
1584 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
1585 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
1586 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
1588 is the original tool bar item definition, then
1590 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
1592 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
1595 ** Mode line changes.
1598 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
1600 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
1601 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
1602 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
1604 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
1605 a `local-map' text property.
1607 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
1608 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
1610 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
1611 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
1612 `local-map' property.
1614 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
1615 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
1619 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
1620 variable mode-line-format to nil.
1623 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
1625 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
1626 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
1627 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
1628 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
1631 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
1634 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
1635 position in the header-line.
1638 ** Text property `display'
1640 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
1641 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
1642 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
1643 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
1645 *** Variable width and height spaces
1647 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
1648 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
1649 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
1650 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
1651 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
1652 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
1653 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
1655 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
1656 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
1657 properties described below.
1659 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
1660 characters having the `display' property.
1664 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
1665 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
1667 - :relative-width FACTOR
1669 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
1670 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
1671 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
1672 width of that character by FACTOR.
1676 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
1677 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
1679 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
1683 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
1686 - :relative-height FACTOR
1688 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
1689 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
1693 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
1694 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
1695 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
1698 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
1702 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
1703 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
1704 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
1705 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
1706 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
1707 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
1708 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
1709 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
1710 as display specification.
1712 *** Other display properties
1714 - :space-width FACTOR
1716 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
1717 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
1722 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
1724 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
1725 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
1726 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
1727 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
1728 a font is available counts as a step.
1730 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
1731 as tall as the frame's default font.
1733 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
1734 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
1736 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
1737 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
1741 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
1742 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
1743 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
1744 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
1745 `:height' subproperty.
1747 *** Conditional display properties
1749 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
1750 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
1751 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
1752 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
1753 the text having the `display' property.
1755 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
1759 ** New menu separator types.
1761 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
1762 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
1763 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
1764 to specify other menu separator types.
1766 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
1768 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
1771 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
1773 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
1775 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
1777 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
1779 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
1781 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1783 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
1785 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
1787 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
1789 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
1790 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
1792 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
1794 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
1796 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
1798 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
1800 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
1802 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
1804 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
1806 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1808 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
1810 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
1812 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
1814 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
1816 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
1818 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
1820 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
1821 the corresponding single-line separators.
1824 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
1826 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
1827 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
1828 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
1829 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
1830 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
1831 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
1832 default foreground is black.
1834 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
1835 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
1836 `ScrollBarBackground').
1838 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
1839 settings for scroll bar colors.
1842 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
1843 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
1846 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
1847 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
1848 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
1849 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
1850 the original window start.
1853 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
1854 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
1855 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
1858 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
1860 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
1861 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
1862 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
1863 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
1865 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
1866 fixed-width and fixed-height.
1868 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
1870 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
1871 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
1872 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
1873 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
1874 temporarily to nil, for example
1876 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
1877 (enlarge-window 10))
1879 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
1880 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
1882 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
1884 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
1886 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
1887 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
1888 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
1890 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
1891 is the one that is used.
1893 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
1894 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
1895 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
1896 separate from the command's regular output.
1897 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
1898 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
1899 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
1902 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
1903 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
1904 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
1905 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
1907 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
1908 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
1909 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
1910 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
1912 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
1913 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
1914 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
1915 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
1917 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
1918 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
1919 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
1920 they never ignore case.
1922 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
1923 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
1924 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
1925 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
1926 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
1927 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
1928 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
1930 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
1931 the same format that was used in the file before.
1933 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
1934 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
1936 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
1937 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
1938 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
1940 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
1941 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
1942 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
1943 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
1944 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
1945 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
1946 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
1948 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
1949 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
1950 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
1951 format. You can now customize these variables.
1953 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
1954 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
1955 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
1956 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
1958 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
1959 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
1960 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
1962 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
1963 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
1964 doesn't have any effect.
1966 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
1969 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
1970 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
1971 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
1973 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
1974 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
1975 `auto-show-mode' command.
1977 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
1978 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
1979 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
1980 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
1981 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
1983 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
1984 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
1986 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
1987 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
1988 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
1990 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
1991 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
1992 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
1993 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
1995 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
1997 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
1998 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
1999 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
2000 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
2001 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
2003 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
2004 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
2006 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
2007 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
2008 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
2009 `?' on other systems.
2011 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
2012 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
2015 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
2016 current codepage when it starts.
2020 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
2021 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
2022 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
2023 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
2024 buffer-file-coding-system.
2026 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
2027 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
2030 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
2031 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
2032 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
2033 list of possible coding systems.
2037 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
2038 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
2039 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
2040 docstring for details.
2042 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
2043 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
2044 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
2045 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
2046 lineup functions use this feature currently.
2048 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
2049 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
2051 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
2052 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
2054 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
2055 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
2056 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
2057 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
2060 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
2061 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
2063 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
2064 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
2065 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
2066 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
2068 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
2069 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
2070 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
2071 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
2072 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
2074 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
2076 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
2078 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
2079 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
2081 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
2083 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
2084 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
2085 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
2086 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
2087 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
2091 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
2092 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
2093 Gnus manual for the full story.
2095 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
2096 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
2097 group, which is created automatically.
2099 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
2102 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
2104 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
2105 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
2107 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
2110 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
2112 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
2113 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
2115 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
2117 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
2118 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
2120 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
2121 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
2123 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
2124 control over simplification.
2126 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
2128 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
2131 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
2133 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
2135 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
2136 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
2137 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
2139 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
2140 `a' forces normal posting method.
2142 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
2145 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
2148 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
2149 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
2151 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
2154 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
2156 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
2158 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
2159 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
2161 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
2162 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
2164 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
2166 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
2169 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
2170 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
2172 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
2173 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
2175 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
2177 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
2179 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
2181 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
2183 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
2184 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
2185 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
2187 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
2188 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
2189 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
2190 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
2191 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
2193 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
2194 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
2195 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
2196 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
2198 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
2199 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
2200 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
2203 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
2205 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
2206 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
2208 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
2209 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
2210 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
2211 removed from the label.
2213 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
2214 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
2216 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
2217 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
2219 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
2220 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
2223 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
2225 ** New/deleted modes and packages
2227 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
2228 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
2230 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
2231 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
2232 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
2234 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
2235 changes with a special face.
2237 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
2238 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
2239 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
2241 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
2243 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
2244 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
2245 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
2246 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
2247 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
2249 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
2250 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
2251 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
2253 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
2254 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
2255 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
2256 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
2257 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
2258 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
2259 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
2260 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
2261 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
2263 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
2264 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
2265 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
2266 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
2267 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
2270 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
2271 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
2272 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
2273 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
2274 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
2275 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
2277 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
2278 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
2279 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
2280 was not documented clearly before.
2282 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
2283 This includes Tetris and Snake.
2285 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
2287 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
2288 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
2289 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
2290 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
2292 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
2293 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
2294 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
2296 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
2298 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
2299 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
2301 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
2302 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
2305 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
2306 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
2307 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
2308 file names and attributes are returned.
2310 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
2311 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
2312 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
2313 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
2316 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
2317 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
2319 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
2321 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
2322 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
2323 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
2326 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
2327 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
2330 The new function process-running-child-p
2331 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
2332 terminal to its own child process.
2334 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
2335 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
2336 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
2337 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
2339 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
2340 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
2342 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
2343 :included is an alias for :visible.
2345 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
2346 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
2347 to move or copy menu entries.
2349 ** Multibyte editing changes
2351 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
2352 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
2353 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
2354 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
2355 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
2356 (setq char (sref str idx)
2357 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
2358 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
2360 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
2361 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
2362 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
2364 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
2365 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
2366 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
2368 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
2370 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
2371 across the boundary.
2373 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
2374 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
2375 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
2376 contains 8-bit characters.
2377 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
2378 contains invalid characters.
2380 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
2381 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
2382 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
2383 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
2386 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
2387 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
2388 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
2389 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
2391 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
2392 compose Thai characters in a string.
2394 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
2395 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
2396 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
2397 menus should always use the third argument.
2399 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
2400 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
2401 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
2402 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
2404 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
2405 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
2406 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
2407 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
2409 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
2410 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
2411 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
2414 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
2416 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
2417 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
2418 requested feature cannot be loaded.
2420 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
2421 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
2422 means to clear out that attribute.
2424 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
2425 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
2427 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
2428 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
2429 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
2430 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
2432 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
2433 the gap of the current buffer.
2435 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
2436 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
2439 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
2440 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
2441 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
2442 it back in after any modifications have been made.
2444 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
2446 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
2447 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
2448 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
2449 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
2450 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
2452 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
2453 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
2454 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
2455 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
2456 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
2458 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
2459 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
2460 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
2462 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
2463 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
2464 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
2465 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
2466 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
2469 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
2470 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
2471 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
2472 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
2474 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
2476 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
2477 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
2478 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
2479 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
2481 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
2482 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
2483 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
2484 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
2485 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
2486 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
2487 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
2490 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
2493 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
2494 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
2495 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
2496 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
2497 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
2499 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
2500 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
2501 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
2502 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
2504 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
2505 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
2506 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
2507 something that most users not do.
2509 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
2510 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
2511 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
2514 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
2517 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
2518 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
2519 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
2520 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
2523 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
2524 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
2525 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
2526 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
2527 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
2530 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
2531 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
2532 to be confused by TeX commands.
2534 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
2535 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
2536 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
2537 of various alternative replacements and actions.
2539 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
2540 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
2541 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
2542 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
2543 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
2545 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
2546 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
2548 ** Changes in input method usage.
2550 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
2551 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
2554 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
2556 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
2557 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
2559 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
2560 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
2562 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
2564 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
2566 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
2567 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
2569 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
2570 given in the following case:
2571 o When you are using a complex input method.
2572 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
2574 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
2575 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
2576 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
2577 setting it to t is helpful.
2579 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
2581 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
2583 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
2584 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
2585 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
2586 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
2589 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
2590 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
2591 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
2594 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
2596 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
2598 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
2599 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
2601 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
2602 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
2603 its owner and group.
2605 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
2606 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
2608 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
2609 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
2611 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
2612 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
2613 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
2614 by the left edge of the rectangle.
2616 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
2617 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
2618 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
2619 for writing keyboard macros.
2621 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
2622 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
2623 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
2624 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
2625 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
2628 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
2630 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
2631 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
2634 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
2635 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
2636 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
2637 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
2639 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
2640 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
2641 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
2643 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
2644 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
2645 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
2646 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
2648 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
2649 failure if the command produces no output.
2651 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
2652 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
2655 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
2656 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
2657 function and variable names.
2659 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
2660 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
2661 file-coding-system-alist.
2663 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
2664 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
2665 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
2666 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
2667 according to the current fontset.
2669 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
2671 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
2672 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
2673 nonascii-insert-offset.
2675 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
2676 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
2677 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
2678 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
2680 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
2681 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
2683 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
2684 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
2686 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
2687 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
2690 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
2691 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
2693 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
2694 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
2695 all variables that have documentation.
2697 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
2698 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
2699 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
2700 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
2701 it should show; the default is 20.
2703 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
2704 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
2707 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
2708 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
2709 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
2710 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
2711 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
2712 Newly added options are included as well.
2714 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
2715 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
2716 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
2718 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
2721 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
2722 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
2724 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
2725 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
2728 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
2729 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
2732 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
2733 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
2734 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
2735 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
2738 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
2740 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
2741 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
2742 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
2744 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
2745 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
2746 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
2749 ** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
2750 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
2752 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
2753 read and post multi-lingual articles.
2755 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
2756 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
2757 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
2758 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
2759 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
2760 made invisible again.
2762 ** Mail reading and sending changes
2764 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
2765 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
2766 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
2769 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
2770 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
2771 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
2772 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
2773 rmail-default-body-file.
2775 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
2776 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
2777 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
2779 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
2780 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
2781 is evaluated to insert the signature.
2783 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
2784 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
2785 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
2786 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
2787 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
2788 especially interested in trying feedmail.
2790 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
2791 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
2792 provided by feedmail are:
2794 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
2795 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
2796 there is also a queue for draft messages
2798 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
2799 be prompted for confirmation
2801 **** does smart filling of address headers
2803 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
2804 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
2805 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
2807 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
2808 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
2809 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
2810 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
2814 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
2815 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
2817 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
2818 run Dired on the directory name at point.
2820 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
2821 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
2822 for a specified regexp.
2826 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
2829 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
2830 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
2833 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
2834 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
2835 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
2836 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
2838 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
2839 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
2840 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
2841 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
2842 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
2844 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
2845 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
2846 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
2847 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
2848 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
2850 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
2851 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
2852 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
2853 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
2855 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
2856 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
2857 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
2859 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
2860 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
2861 session to resolve them.
2863 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
2864 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
2865 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
2868 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
2869 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
2870 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
2871 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
2872 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
2873 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
2876 ** Changes in Font Lock
2878 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
2879 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
2880 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
2881 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
2882 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
2884 ** Frame name display changes
2886 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
2887 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
2888 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
2889 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
2891 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
2892 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
2895 ** Comint (subshell) changes
2897 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
2898 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
2899 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
2901 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
2903 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
2904 that is, the line after the last line you got.
2905 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
2907 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
2908 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
2911 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
2912 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
2913 previously sent input.
2915 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
2916 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
2917 as the search string.
2919 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
2920 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
2924 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
2925 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
2926 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
2929 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
2930 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
2931 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
2932 style is still the default however.
2934 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
2936 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
2937 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
2938 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
2940 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
2941 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
2943 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
2944 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
2946 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
2947 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
2949 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
2950 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
2952 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
2953 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
2954 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
2955 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
2957 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
2959 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
2960 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
2961 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
2963 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
2964 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
2965 expanding dynamically.
2967 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
2968 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
2970 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
2971 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
2972 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
2973 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
2975 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
2977 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
2979 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
2980 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
2981 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
2982 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
2983 against the first word in the title.
2985 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
2986 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
2987 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
2988 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
2989 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
2990 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
2992 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
2993 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
2994 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
2995 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
2997 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
2999 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
3000 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
3001 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
3002 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
3003 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
3004 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
3006 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
3007 Editing group once the package is loaded.
3009 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
3010 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
3011 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
3013 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
3014 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
3018 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
3019 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
3020 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
3022 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
3023 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
3024 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
3025 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
3028 o URLs are automatically skipped
3029 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
3031 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
3033 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3035 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
3036 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
3037 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
3038 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
3040 *** New recursive parser.
3042 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
3043 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
3044 recursive parser scans the individual files.
3046 *** Parsing only part of a document.
3048 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
3049 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
3050 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
3052 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
3054 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
3056 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
3058 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
3060 *** Using multiple selection buffers
3062 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
3063 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
3065 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
3067 *** References to external documents.
3069 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
3070 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
3071 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
3072 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
3073 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
3074 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
3075 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
3077 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
3079 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
3080 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
3082 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
3083 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
3085 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
3087 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
3088 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
3090 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
3092 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
3093 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
3094 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
3095 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
3096 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
3097 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
3100 *** Support for the varioref package
3102 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
3106 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
3107 and citations are created. These hooks are
3108 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
3109 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
3111 *** Citations outside LaTeX
3113 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
3114 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
3116 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
3118 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
3119 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
3122 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
3124 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
3125 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
3126 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
3127 directories that contain the same file name.
3129 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
3130 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
3131 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
3132 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
3133 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
3134 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
3135 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
3138 ** New modes and packages
3140 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
3141 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
3142 it, but some do not.
3144 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
3147 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
3148 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
3151 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
3153 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
3154 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
3155 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
3156 established system of notation similar to Chess.
3158 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
3159 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
3160 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
3162 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
3163 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
3164 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
3165 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
3166 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
3169 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
3170 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
3172 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
3173 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
3174 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
3175 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
3177 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
3179 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
3180 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
3181 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
3182 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
3183 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
3184 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
3185 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
3186 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
3187 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
3188 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
3189 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
3191 Platform-specific modes:
3193 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
3194 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
3195 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
3196 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
3197 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
3198 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
3199 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
3200 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
3201 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
3203 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3205 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
3206 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
3207 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
3208 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
3210 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
3211 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
3212 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
3214 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
3215 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
3216 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
3217 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
3219 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
3220 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
3221 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
3224 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
3225 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
3226 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
3227 current input method for reading this one event.
3229 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
3230 now control whether to output certain characters as
3231 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
3232 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
3233 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
3234 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
3236 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
3238 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
3239 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
3241 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
3242 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
3243 always increases point by 1.
3245 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
3246 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
3248 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
3250 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
3251 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
3252 default value changed. For example,
3254 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
3259 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
3262 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
3263 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
3264 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
3265 `:version' in the top level group.
3267 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
3269 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
3270 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
3272 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
3273 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
3274 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
3277 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
3278 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
3281 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
3282 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
3283 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
3285 ** Frame-local variables.
3287 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
3288 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
3289 local bindings for that variable.
3291 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
3292 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
3293 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
3296 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
3297 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
3298 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
3299 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
3301 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
3302 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
3303 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
3304 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
3306 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
3307 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
3308 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
3309 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
3310 See the documentation in sregex.el.
3312 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
3313 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
3314 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
3315 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
3317 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
3318 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
3320 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
3321 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
3322 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
3324 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
3325 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
3326 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
3327 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
3329 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
3330 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
3333 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
3334 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
3335 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
3336 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
3337 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
3339 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
3340 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
3341 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
3342 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
3344 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
3345 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
3346 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
3347 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
3348 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
3350 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
3351 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
3352 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
3353 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
3355 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
3356 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
3357 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
3359 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
3360 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
3361 was directed to display this buffer.
3363 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
3364 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
3365 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
3366 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
3367 set-window-configuration.
3369 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
3370 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
3371 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
3372 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
3374 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
3375 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
3376 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
3378 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
3379 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
3380 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
3382 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
3383 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
3385 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
3386 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
3388 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
3389 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
3390 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
3392 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
3393 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
3394 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
3395 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
3399 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
3400 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
3403 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
3404 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
3405 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
3406 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
3407 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
3409 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
3411 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
3412 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
3413 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
3414 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
3417 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
3418 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
3419 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
3420 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
3421 The supported properties include
3423 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3425 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
3426 item should appear in the menu.
3428 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
3429 which will be REAL-BINDING.
3430 It should return a binding to use instead.
3432 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
3433 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
3434 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
3435 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
3436 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
3439 This means that the command normally has no
3440 keyboard equivalent.
3441 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
3442 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
3443 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
3444 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
3445 value says whether this button is currently selected.
3447 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
3448 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
3450 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
3454 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
3455 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
3456 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
3457 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
3459 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
3461 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3462 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
3463 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
3464 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
3465 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
3466 forward, away from the user.
3468 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3470 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
3471 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
3472 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
3473 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
3474 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
3476 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
3478 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
3479 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
3480 that were dragged and dropped.
3482 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
3484 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
3486 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
3487 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
3488 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
3490 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
3491 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
3492 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
3494 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
3495 in Emacs 19 and before.
3497 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
3498 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
3500 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
3501 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
3502 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
3503 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
3505 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
3506 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
3507 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
3508 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
3509 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
3511 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
3512 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
3513 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
3514 consistent with the new representation.
3516 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
3517 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
3518 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
3519 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3521 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
3522 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
3523 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
3525 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
3526 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
3527 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
3529 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
3530 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
3531 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
3533 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3534 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
3536 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
3537 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
3539 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
3540 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
3541 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
3542 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
3544 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
3545 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
3547 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
3548 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
3549 buffer or string being searched.
3551 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
3552 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
3553 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
3554 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
3555 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
3556 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
3557 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
3559 *** Structure of coding system changed.
3561 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
3562 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
3563 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
3564 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
3565 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
3566 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
3567 define-coding-system-alias.
3569 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
3570 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
3571 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
3572 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
3573 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
3574 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
3575 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
3578 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
3579 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
3580 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
3581 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
3583 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
3584 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
3585 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
3586 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
3588 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
3589 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
3590 This function requires a user interaction.
3592 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
3593 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
3594 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
3595 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
3596 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
3597 select-safe-coding-system.
3599 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
3600 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
3601 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
3604 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
3605 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
3606 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
3608 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
3609 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
3610 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
3611 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
3613 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
3614 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
3615 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
3618 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
3619 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
3621 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
3622 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
3623 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
3624 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
3625 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
3626 range of characters.
3628 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
3629 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
3631 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
3632 in the current buffer at position POS.
3634 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
3635 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
3636 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
3637 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
3638 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
3639 binding input-method-function to nil.
3641 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
3642 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
3643 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
3644 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
3645 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
3647 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
3648 subsequent events of a key sequence.
3650 *** You can customize any language environment by using
3651 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
3653 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
3654 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
3655 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
3656 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
3657 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
3659 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
3661 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
3662 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
3663 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
3666 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
3667 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
3669 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
3670 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
3671 in your .emacs file.)
3673 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
3674 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
3676 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
3677 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
3679 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
3680 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
3683 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
3684 delete the character before point, as usual.
3686 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
3687 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
3688 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
3690 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
3691 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
3692 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
3693 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
3694 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
3697 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
3698 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
3699 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
3700 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
3701 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
3703 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
3704 and is an alias for it.
3706 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
3707 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
3709 ** Scrolling changes
3711 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
3712 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
3714 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
3715 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
3718 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
3719 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
3720 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
3721 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
3723 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
3724 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
3725 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
3726 recenters the window.
3728 ** International character set support (MULE)
3730 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
3731 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
3732 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
3733 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
3734 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
3735 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
3737 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
3738 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
3739 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
3740 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
3741 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
3743 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
3744 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
3745 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
3746 language, to make it possible to type them.
3748 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
3749 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
3751 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
3752 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
3754 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
3756 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
3758 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
3759 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
3760 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
3761 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
3762 characters for their work until they want to change.
3766 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
3767 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
3768 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
3769 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
3770 support several input methods.
3772 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
3773 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
3776 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
3777 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
3778 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
3779 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
3780 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
3783 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
3784 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
3785 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
3786 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
3787 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
3789 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
3790 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
3791 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
3792 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
3794 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
3795 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
3796 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
3797 the first guess is wrong.
3799 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
3800 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
3802 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
3803 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
3804 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
3805 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
3807 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
3808 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
3809 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
3810 translate automatically to and from either one.
3812 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
3814 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
3815 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
3816 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
3819 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
3820 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
3821 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
3822 multibyte characters in that buffer.
3824 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
3825 character conversion as well.
3827 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
3829 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
3830 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
3831 requires using many fonts.
3833 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
3834 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
3836 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
3837 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
3838 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
3839 you would use a font.
3841 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
3842 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
3843 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
3845 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
3846 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
3847 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
3848 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
3849 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
3851 *** Defining fontsets.
3853 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
3854 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
3855 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
3857 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
3858 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
3859 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
3860 standard fontset are created automatically.
3862 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
3863 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
3864 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
3865 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
3866 name is `fontset-startup'.
3868 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
3869 The resource value should have this form:
3870 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
3871 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
3872 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
3873 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
3874 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
3875 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
3876 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
3877 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
3878 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
3880 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
3881 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
3882 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
3884 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
3885 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
3887 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
3888 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
3889 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
3890 Here is the substitution rule:
3891 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
3892 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
3893 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
3894 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
3895 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
3897 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
3898 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
3899 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
3901 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
3902 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
3903 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
3904 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
3907 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
3908 defaults for a particular choice of language.
3910 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
3911 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
3912 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
3913 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
3914 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
3915 system for new files that you create.
3917 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
3918 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
3919 whole Emacs session.
3921 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
3922 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
3923 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
3925 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
3926 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
3927 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
3928 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
3929 coding systems that Emacs supports.
3931 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
3932 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
3933 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
3934 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
3935 is used for *the immediately following command*.
3937 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
3938 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
3940 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
3941 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
3943 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
3944 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
3946 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
3947 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
3948 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
3949 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
3952 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
3953 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
3954 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
3955 translated into that character code.
3957 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
3958 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
3960 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
3962 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
3963 the coding system for keyboard input.
3965 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
3966 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
3967 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
3969 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
3971 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
3972 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
3973 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
3974 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
3975 designed to work with terminals.
3977 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
3978 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
3979 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
3980 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
3981 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
3982 in the corresponding buffer.
3984 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
3986 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
3987 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
3988 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
3990 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
3991 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
3992 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
3995 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
3996 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
3998 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
3999 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
4000 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
4001 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
4003 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
4004 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
4005 related information.
4007 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
4008 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
4011 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
4012 information about the support for a particular language.
4013 You specify the language as an argument.
4015 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
4016 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
4019 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
4020 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
4021 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
4022 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
4024 A alternativnyj (Russian)
4026 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
4027 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
4028 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
4029 E euc-japan (Japanese)
4030 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4031 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
4032 K euc-korea (Korean)
4035 S shift_jis (Japanese)
4038 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
4039 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
4040 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
4044 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
4045 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
4046 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
4047 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
4049 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
4050 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
4052 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
4053 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
4054 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
4055 Rmail files themselves.
4057 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
4058 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
4060 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
4063 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
4064 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
4065 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
4066 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
4067 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
4069 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
4070 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
4071 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
4074 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
4075 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
4076 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
4077 without any conversion.
4079 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
4080 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
4081 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
4082 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
4084 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
4085 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
4087 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
4088 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
4090 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
4091 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
4093 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
4094 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
4095 in the buffer before point.
4097 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
4098 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
4101 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
4102 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
4104 ** File locking works with NFS now.
4106 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
4107 in the same directory as FILENAME.
4109 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
4110 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
4111 can become a bottleneck.
4113 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
4114 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
4115 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
4116 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
4117 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
4118 so useful that the change is worth while.
4120 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
4121 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
4122 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
4123 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
4125 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
4126 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
4129 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
4130 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
4131 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
4133 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
4134 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
4135 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
4137 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
4138 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
4139 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
4141 ** Changes in View mode.
4143 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
4144 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
4146 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
4147 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
4149 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
4152 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
4153 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
4155 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
4156 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
4157 not just the selected window.
4159 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
4160 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
4161 turns View mode on or off.
4163 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
4164 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
4165 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
4167 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
4168 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
4170 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
4171 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
4172 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
4173 which version to compare with.
4175 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
4176 blocks if a match is inside the block.
4178 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
4179 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
4180 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
4181 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
4183 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
4184 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
4185 blocks, all of them or none.
4187 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
4188 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
4191 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
4192 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
4193 However, the mode will not be changed if
4194 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
4195 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
4196 not suitable for ordinary files, or
4197 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
4199 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
4201 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
4202 these commands do not change the major mode.
4204 ** M-x occur changes.
4206 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
4207 it performs a case-sensitive search.
4209 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
4210 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
4211 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
4213 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
4214 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
4215 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
4216 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
4217 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
4219 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
4220 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
4221 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
4222 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
4224 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4225 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
4226 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
4228 ** Outline mode changes.
4230 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
4232 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
4234 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
4235 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
4236 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
4239 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
4240 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
4243 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
4244 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
4246 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
4248 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4249 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
4250 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
4251 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
4253 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
4254 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
4255 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
4257 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
4258 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
4261 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
4262 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
4263 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
4264 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
4266 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
4267 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
4268 can be. The default value is 30.
4270 ** Changes in Mail mode.
4272 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
4273 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
4274 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
4275 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
4276 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
4279 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
4280 compose-mail-other-frame.
4282 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
4283 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
4284 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
4285 buffer that shows the original message.
4287 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
4288 with separator lines around the contents.
4290 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
4291 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
4292 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
4293 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
4295 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
4297 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
4298 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
4299 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
4300 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
4302 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
4303 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
4306 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
4307 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
4310 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
4311 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
4312 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
4313 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
4315 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
4316 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
4317 be taken to be magic.
4319 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
4320 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
4321 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
4323 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
4324 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
4326 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
4327 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
4329 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
4331 new key dired.el binding old key
4332 ------- ---------------- -------
4333 * c dired-change-marks c
4335 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
4336 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
4337 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
4339 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
4340 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
4341 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
4342 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
4343 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
4344 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
4348 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
4349 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
4350 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
4351 each time you run it.
4353 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
4354 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
4356 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
4357 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
4358 means to move in the opposite direction.
4360 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
4361 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
4363 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
4364 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
4365 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
4366 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
4371 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
4373 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
4376 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
4377 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
4379 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
4382 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
4384 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
4386 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
4388 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
4389 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
4390 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
4392 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
4394 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
4396 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
4397 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
4399 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
4400 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
4401 used to pick articles.
4403 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
4404 another have been added.
4406 `M-x gnus-change-server'
4408 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
4409 generating lines in buffers.
4411 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
4414 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
4416 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
4418 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
4420 *** Scores can be decayed.
4422 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
4424 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
4425 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
4427 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
4430 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
4432 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
4433 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
4435 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
4437 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
4438 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
4440 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
4441 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
4443 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
4446 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
4447 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
4449 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
4451 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
4453 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
4455 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
4457 Use the `Y c' command.
4459 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
4461 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
4463 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
4465 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
4466 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
4468 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
4470 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
4472 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
4473 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
4475 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
4477 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
4478 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
4479 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
4480 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
4483 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
4484 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
4485 particular news group. This can be done by:
4487 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
4489 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
4490 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
4491 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
4492 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
4493 for reading and posting).
4495 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
4496 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
4497 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
4498 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
4501 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
4502 default. Here are some of these default settings:
4504 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
4505 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
4506 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
4507 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
4508 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
4510 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
4511 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
4515 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
4516 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
4517 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
4518 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
4519 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
4522 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
4523 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
4524 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
4525 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
4526 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
4527 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
4529 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
4530 of the current buffer.
4532 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
4533 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
4534 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
4536 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
4537 style that the Python developers like.
4539 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
4540 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
4541 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
4545 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
4546 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
4547 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
4549 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
4550 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
4553 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
4554 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
4556 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
4557 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
4558 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
4559 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
4561 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
4562 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
4564 ** Calendar changes.
4566 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
4567 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
4568 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
4572 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
4574 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
4576 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
4577 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
4578 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
4579 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
4580 It defaults to `letter'.
4581 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
4583 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
4584 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
4585 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
4587 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
4588 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
4591 *** Horizontal layout
4593 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
4594 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
4595 All are measured in points.
4599 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
4600 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
4601 All are measured in points.
4605 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
4606 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
4607 margin above the text.
4609 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
4610 framing box is printed around the header.
4612 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
4613 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
4615 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
4616 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
4617 `ps-header-font-size'.
4621 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
4622 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
4623 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
4624 elements to this alist.
4626 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
4627 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
4629 ** hideshow changes.
4631 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
4634 *** Support for java-mode added.
4636 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
4637 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
4639 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
4640 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
4641 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
4643 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
4644 robust and a lot faster.
4646 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
4648 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
4649 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
4650 documentation for more details.
4652 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
4654 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
4655 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
4656 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
4657 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
4658 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
4660 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
4661 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
4662 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
4663 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
4669 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
4670 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
4671 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
4672 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
4673 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
4674 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
4676 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
4678 *** Maximum decoration
4680 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
4681 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
4682 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
4683 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
4684 to get the old behavior.
4688 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
4690 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
4691 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
4693 *** Configurable support
4695 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
4696 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
4697 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
4698 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
4699 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
4700 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
4701 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
4703 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
4704 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
4705 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
4707 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
4709 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
4710 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
4713 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
4715 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
4721 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
4722 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
4723 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
4724 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
4726 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
4728 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
4729 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
4730 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
4732 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
4734 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
4735 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
4736 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
4737 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
4738 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
4739 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
4740 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
4742 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
4743 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
4744 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
4745 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
4746 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
4747 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
4749 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
4751 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
4752 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
4753 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
4754 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
4756 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
4759 ** Ada mode changes.
4761 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
4762 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
4763 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
4764 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
4767 *** There are two new commands:
4768 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
4769 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
4771 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
4772 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
4773 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
4775 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
4776 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
4777 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
4779 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
4780 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
4781 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
4782 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
4784 ** Scheme mode changes.
4786 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
4787 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
4788 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
4789 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
4792 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
4793 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
4794 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
4795 variables as buffer-local variables.
4797 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
4800 ** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
4801 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
4804 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
4805 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
4806 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
4808 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
4809 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
4812 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
4813 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
4815 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
4816 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
4819 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
4820 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
4821 these register values no longer become completely useless.
4822 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
4823 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
4824 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
4826 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
4827 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
4828 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
4829 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
4831 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
4832 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
4833 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
4834 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
4835 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
4837 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
4838 since it applies only to the current frame.
4840 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
4841 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
4842 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
4844 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
4845 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
4846 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
4847 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
4848 instead of just the file you are editing.
4852 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
4853 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
4854 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
4855 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
4856 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
4859 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
4860 knows which kind of label is needed.
4862 C-c ) reftex-reference
4863 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
4864 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
4866 C-c [ reftex-citation
4867 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
4868 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
4870 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
4871 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
4874 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
4875 can quickly jump to every section.
4877 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
4878 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
4879 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
4880 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
4881 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
4883 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4885 *** Info documentation is now available.
4887 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
4888 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
4890 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
4891 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
4893 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
4894 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
4896 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
4897 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
4898 appropriate functions.
4900 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
4901 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
4903 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
4906 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
4907 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
4909 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
4912 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
4913 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
4914 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
4916 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
4917 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
4918 prefixed with `ALT'.
4920 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
4921 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
4922 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
4925 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
4926 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
4927 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
4929 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
4930 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
4932 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
4933 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
4934 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
4936 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
4938 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
4940 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
4943 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
4944 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
4947 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
4950 *** Added support for imenu.
4952 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
4953 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
4954 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
4955 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
4957 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
4958 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
4960 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
4962 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
4963 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
4964 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
4967 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
4968 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
4970 ** browse-url changes
4972 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
4973 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
4974 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
4975 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
4976 customization variables.
4978 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
4980 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
4981 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
4982 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
4986 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
4987 pops up the Info file for this command.
4989 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
4990 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
4991 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
4994 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
4995 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
4996 files in the same directory.
4998 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
4999 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
5000 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
5004 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
5005 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
5007 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
5008 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
5009 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
5010 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
5011 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
5012 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
5013 color when Viper is in insert state.
5014 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
5015 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
5016 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
5020 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
5021 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
5022 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
5023 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
5024 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
5026 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
5028 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
5029 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
5031 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
5032 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
5033 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
5035 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
5036 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
5037 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
5038 methods and protocols.
5040 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
5041 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
5042 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
5045 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
5046 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
5047 at least M times and as many as N times.
5049 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
5050 in files has changed slightly.
5052 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
5053 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
5054 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
5055 with old time-stamp-format values.
5057 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
5058 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
5059 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
5062 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
5063 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
5064 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
5065 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
5066 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
5067 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
5069 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
5070 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
5071 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
5073 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
5074 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
5075 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
5076 recommended now will continue to work then.
5078 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
5081 ** There are some additional major modes:
5083 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
5084 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
5085 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
5087 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
5088 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
5091 ** New Lisp packages include:
5093 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
5095 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
5096 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
5098 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
5100 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
5103 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
5104 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
5107 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
5108 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
5109 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
5110 strings or comments.
5112 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
5113 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
5114 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
5115 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
5118 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
5119 can visit them by short forms of their names.
5121 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
5122 Emacs Lisp function at point.
5124 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
5126 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
5127 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
5129 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
5131 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
5133 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
5135 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
5136 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
5138 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
5139 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
5140 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
5141 original place after inserting the copy.
5143 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
5146 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
5147 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
5148 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
5150 Enable mouse-drag with:
5151 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
5153 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
5155 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
5156 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
5158 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
5159 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
5163 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
5164 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
5165 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
5166 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
5167 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
5168 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
5169 instance) and vice versa.
5171 To use this package load it using
5172 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
5173 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
5174 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
5175 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
5176 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
5177 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
5179 *** Interface to ph.
5181 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
5183 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
5184 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
5187 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
5189 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
5190 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
5191 while the real cursor does not move.
5193 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
5194 for visiting your favorite web sites.
5196 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
5197 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
5201 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
5202 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
5203 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
5204 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
5206 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
5208 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
5210 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
5212 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
5213 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
5214 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
5215 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
5216 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
5218 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
5219 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
5220 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
5221 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
5222 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
5223 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
5225 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
5227 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
5228 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
5229 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
5230 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
5232 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
5233 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
5235 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
5236 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
5239 ** Basic Lisp changes
5241 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
5242 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
5244 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
5245 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
5248 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
5250 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
5252 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
5253 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
5255 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
5256 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
5259 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
5261 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
5263 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
5265 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
5266 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
5267 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
5270 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
5271 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
5272 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
5274 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
5275 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
5276 adding one of these suffixes.
5278 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
5279 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
5280 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
5282 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
5283 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
5285 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
5287 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
5288 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
5290 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
5291 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
5293 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
5295 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
5296 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
5298 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
5299 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
5300 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
5301 works using `save-current-buffer'.
5303 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
5304 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
5307 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
5308 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
5309 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
5312 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
5313 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
5316 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
5318 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
5319 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
5320 Then it returns that string.
5322 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
5324 (with-output-to-string
5325 (princ "The buffer is ")
5326 (princ (buffer-name)))
5328 returns "The buffer is foo".
5330 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
5333 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
5334 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
5335 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
5337 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
5338 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
5340 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
5341 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
5342 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
5343 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
5344 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
5345 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
5347 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
5348 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
5349 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
5352 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
5353 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
5354 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
5355 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
5356 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
5358 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
5359 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
5360 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
5361 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
5363 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
5364 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
5366 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
5368 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
5369 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
5370 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
5371 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
5374 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
5375 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
5378 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
5380 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
5381 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
5382 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
5383 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
5384 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
5386 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
5388 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
5389 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
5390 more than the number of characters.
5392 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
5393 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
5394 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
5395 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
5396 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
5397 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
5399 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
5400 and returns a string containing those characters.
5402 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
5403 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
5404 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
5405 character, sref signals an error.
5407 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
5408 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
5409 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5411 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
5412 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
5413 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
5415 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
5416 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
5417 to a vector of the characters in it.
5419 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
5420 of a string. You call it as follows:
5422 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
5424 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
5425 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
5426 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
5427 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
5428 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
5430 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
5431 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5433 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
5434 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
5436 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
5437 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
5438 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
5439 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
5441 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
5443 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
5445 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
5446 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
5447 are not included in the resulting value.
5449 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
5450 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
5451 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
5452 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
5454 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
5455 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
5456 character extends across that column), then the padding character
5457 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
5458 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
5459 column START-COLUMN.
5461 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
5462 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
5463 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
5464 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
5465 changed text, before the change.
5467 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
5468 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
5469 one character set for each script, not for each language.
5471 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
5473 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
5475 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
5476 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
5478 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
5479 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
5480 which identify the character within that character set.
5482 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
5483 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
5484 opposite of split-char.
5486 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
5487 of all the characters between BEG and END.
5489 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
5490 of all the characters in a string.
5492 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
5493 and specifying coding systems.
5495 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
5496 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
5497 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
5498 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
5499 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
5500 as what to do about code conversion.)
5502 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
5503 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
5505 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5506 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5507 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
5509 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5510 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
5511 to match against a file name.
5513 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5514 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5515 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5516 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5517 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5518 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5520 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5521 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5523 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
5524 the coding system to use for network sockets.
5526 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
5527 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
5528 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
5531 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
5532 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
5533 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
5534 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
5535 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
5536 specifies the coding system for encoding.
5538 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
5539 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
5541 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
5542 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
5543 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
5544 start the subprocess.
5546 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
5547 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
5548 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
5549 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
5550 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
5552 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
5553 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
5556 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
5557 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
5558 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
5559 connection permanently or until overridden.
5561 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
5562 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
5563 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
5564 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
5565 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
5566 system for one operation at a time.
5568 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
5569 files, subprocesses or network connections.
5571 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
5572 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
5573 The value is a cons cell,
5574 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
5575 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
5576 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
5577 input to the subprocess.
5579 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
5580 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
5582 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
5583 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
5584 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
5586 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
5587 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
5588 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
5589 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
5592 Thus, instead of writing
5594 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
5595 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
5597 you would now write this:
5599 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
5600 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
5604 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
5605 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
5606 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
5607 for a description of them.
5609 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
5610 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
5612 (defgroup ispell nil
5613 "Spell checking using Ispell."
5616 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
5617 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
5618 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
5619 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
5620 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
5622 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
5623 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
5624 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
5625 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
5626 first-level subgroups.
5628 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
5630 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
5631 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
5635 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
5636 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
5637 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
5638 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
5639 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
5640 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
5642 ** Text property changes
5644 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
5647 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
5648 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
5649 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
5650 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
5651 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
5653 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
5654 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
5655 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
5656 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
5658 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
5659 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
5660 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
5662 ** Changes in invisibility features
5664 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
5665 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
5666 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
5667 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
5668 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
5669 make the overlay visible.
5671 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
5672 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
5673 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
5674 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
5675 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
5676 t when it should hide it.
5678 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
5680 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
5681 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
5682 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
5683 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
5684 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
5685 Here is an example of how to do this:
5687 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
5688 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5689 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
5690 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5693 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
5696 ;; When done with the overlays:
5697 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
5699 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
5701 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
5703 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
5704 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
5705 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
5706 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
5708 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
5709 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
5710 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
5712 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
5713 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
5715 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
5716 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
5718 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
5719 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
5720 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
5722 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
5723 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
5724 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
5725 determine the syntax type of the character.
5727 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
5728 of the current buffer.
5730 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
5731 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
5732 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
5734 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
5735 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
5736 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
5737 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
5738 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
5740 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
5743 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
5744 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
5745 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
5747 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
5748 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
5749 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
5750 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
5751 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
5753 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
5754 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
5755 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
5757 ** Changes in face features
5759 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
5760 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
5762 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
5763 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
5765 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
5766 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
5768 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
5769 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
5771 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
5772 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
5773 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
5774 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
5777 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
5778 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
5780 ** Changes in file-handling functions
5782 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
5783 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
5784 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
5785 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
5787 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
5790 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
5791 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
5793 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5794 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
5796 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
5797 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
5799 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
5800 character code conversion as well as other things.
5802 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
5803 (formerly it did not).
5805 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
5806 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
5808 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
5809 instead of constant strings.
5811 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
5812 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
5813 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
5815 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
5816 in the same way as before.
5818 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
5819 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
5820 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
5822 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
5823 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
5824 else, and returns nil.
5826 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
5827 directory cannot be listed.
5829 ** Changes in minibuffer input
5831 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
5832 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
5833 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
5834 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
5837 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
5838 It is available through the history command M-n.
5840 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
5841 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
5842 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
5843 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
5844 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
5846 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
5847 argument in this way.
5849 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
5850 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
5851 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
5853 ** Echo area features
5855 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
5856 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
5857 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
5858 after the echo area is cleared.
5860 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
5861 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
5863 ** Keyboard input features
5865 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
5866 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
5868 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
5869 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
5872 ** Frame-related changes
5874 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
5875 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
5876 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
5878 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
5879 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
5880 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
5882 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5883 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
5884 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
5885 in the selected frame.
5887 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
5888 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
5889 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
5891 ** X Windows features
5893 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
5894 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
5895 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
5897 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
5898 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
5900 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
5901 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
5902 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
5904 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
5905 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
5907 ** Subprocess features
5909 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
5910 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
5913 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
5914 and returns the output from the command as a string.
5916 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
5917 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
5919 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
5920 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
5922 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
5923 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
5924 goes after the other menu items.
5926 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
5927 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
5928 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
5931 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
5932 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
5934 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
5935 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
5938 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
5939 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
5940 but its hook is still run.
5942 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
5943 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
5945 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
5946 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
5947 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
5949 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
5950 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
5951 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
5954 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
5955 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
5957 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
5958 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
5959 functions like display-time.
5961 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
5962 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
5964 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
5965 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
5966 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
5968 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
5969 if there is an error in compilation.
5971 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
5972 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
5973 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
5974 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
5976 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
5977 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
5978 the *scratch* buffer.
5980 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
5981 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
5982 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
5983 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
5985 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
5986 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
5987 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
5989 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
5990 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
5991 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
5992 and compose-mail-other-frame.
5994 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
5995 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
5996 full name of the specified user will be returned.
5998 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
5999 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
6000 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
6001 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
6002 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
6005 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
6006 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
6007 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
6008 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
6010 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
6011 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
6012 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
6013 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
6015 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
6017 ** imenu.el changes.
6019 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
6020 item from menu created by imenu.
6022 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
6023 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
6024 select one of those items.
6026 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
6028 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
6030 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
6031 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
6033 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
6034 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
6035 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
6037 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
6039 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
6040 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
6042 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6043 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
6044 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
6045 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
6046 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
6049 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
6050 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
6052 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
6053 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
6054 as in previous Emacs versions.
6056 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
6057 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
6058 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
6061 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
6062 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
6063 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
6064 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
6067 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
6068 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
6069 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
6070 line and then executing the macro.
6072 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
6074 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
6075 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
6076 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
6081 *** Font Lock support modes
6083 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
6084 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
6085 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
6086 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
6087 Font Lock mode is enabled.
6089 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
6091 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
6097 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
6098 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
6099 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
6100 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
6101 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
6102 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
6103 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
6105 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
6107 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
6109 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
6111 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6113 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
6116 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
6121 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
6122 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
6123 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
6124 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
6126 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
6127 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
6129 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
6130 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
6133 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
6134 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
6136 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
6138 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
6140 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
6142 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
6145 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
6147 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
6149 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
6151 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
6153 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
6156 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
6158 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
6160 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
6162 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
6164 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
6166 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
6168 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
6170 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
6173 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
6175 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
6178 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
6180 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
6181 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
6183 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
6185 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
6187 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
6189 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
6191 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
6194 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
6196 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
6197 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
6199 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
6200 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
6201 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
6203 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
6204 articles with the `*' command.
6206 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
6208 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
6210 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
6212 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
6214 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
6215 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
6217 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
6220 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
6222 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
6224 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
6226 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
6228 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
6230 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
6232 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
6234 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
6236 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
6238 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
6239 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
6241 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
6244 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
6246 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
6247 buffer to allow easier treatment.
6249 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
6251 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
6253 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
6255 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
6258 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
6260 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
6262 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
6263 cited text to hide is now customizable.
6265 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
6267 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
6269 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
6271 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
6273 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
6275 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
6278 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
6280 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
6281 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
6282 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
6285 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
6288 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
6291 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
6292 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
6295 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
6296 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
6297 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
6298 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
6299 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
6302 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
6304 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
6306 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
6307 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
6308 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
6309 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
6310 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
6312 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
6313 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
6314 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
6316 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
6318 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
6319 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
6320 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
6321 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
6322 chapter of the manual for details.
6324 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
6325 customization variables take effect.
6327 ** Marking with the mouse.
6329 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
6330 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
6331 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
6333 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
6335 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
6337 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
6338 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
6340 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
6341 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
6342 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
6343 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
6344 applications, these problems are significant.
6346 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
6347 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
6348 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
6349 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
6350 other DOS application as a subprocess.
6352 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
6353 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
6355 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
6356 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
6357 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
6358 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
6359 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
6360 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
6362 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
6364 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
6365 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
6366 minibuffer contains.
6368 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
6370 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
6371 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
6372 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
6373 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
6375 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
6376 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
6377 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
6378 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
6380 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
6381 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
6383 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
6384 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
6385 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
6387 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
6388 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
6389 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
6390 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
6392 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
6394 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
6395 to replace the characters it "deletes".
6397 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
6399 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
6400 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
6401 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
6402 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
6403 immediately after the selected one.
6405 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
6406 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
6408 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
6410 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
6411 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
6412 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
6413 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
6416 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
6417 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
6420 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
6421 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
6422 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
6423 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
6424 now that the bug is fixed.
6426 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
6428 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
6429 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
6430 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
6431 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
6433 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
6434 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
6435 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
6436 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
6438 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
6439 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
6440 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
6442 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
6443 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
6444 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
6445 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
6448 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
6449 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
6451 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
6452 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
6453 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
6454 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
6456 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
6457 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
6458 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
6459 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
6460 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
6461 `mail-directory-stream'.)
6463 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
6464 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
6465 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
6466 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
6468 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
6469 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
6470 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
6472 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
6473 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
6474 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
6475 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
6476 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
6477 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
6478 to a limitation in font-lock).
6480 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
6482 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
6483 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
6484 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
6487 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
6488 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
6490 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6492 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
6494 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
6496 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
6498 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
6499 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
6500 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
6501 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
6502 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
6503 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
6505 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
6508 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
6509 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
6511 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
6516 *** Global Font Lock mode
6518 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
6519 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
6520 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
6521 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
6522 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
6524 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
6526 (global-font-lock-mode t)
6530 *** Local Refontification
6532 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
6533 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
6534 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
6535 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
6537 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
6538 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
6539 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
6540 above and below point.
6542 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
6546 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
6547 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
6548 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
6549 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
6550 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
6553 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
6555 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
6556 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
6558 ** hide-show changes.
6560 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
6561 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
6564 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
6565 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
6567 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
6568 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
6569 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
6573 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
6574 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
6576 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
6577 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
6579 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
6581 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
6582 pressing both mouse buttons.
6584 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
6585 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
6588 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
6591 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
6593 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
6594 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
6596 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
6598 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
6600 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
6602 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
6604 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
6606 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
6608 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
6609 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
6610 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
6611 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
6612 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
6614 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
6616 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
6617 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
6618 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
6621 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
6624 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
6626 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
6627 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
6629 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
6630 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
6632 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
6633 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
6634 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
6636 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
6637 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
6640 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6642 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
6643 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
6644 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
6646 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
6647 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
6648 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
6650 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
6651 up if too much time passes.
6653 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
6655 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
6656 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
6657 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
6660 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
6661 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
6662 call looks like this:
6664 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
6666 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
6667 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
6668 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
6671 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
6672 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
6675 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
6676 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
6677 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
6678 each time Emacs becomes idle.
6680 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
6681 idle for SECS seconds.
6683 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
6684 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
6685 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
6688 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
6689 there is no answer within a certain time.
6691 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
6693 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
6694 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
6695 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
6697 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
6698 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
6699 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
6700 arguments in between are ignored.
6702 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
6703 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
6705 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
6706 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
6707 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
6708 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
6711 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
6712 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
6713 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
6714 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
6715 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
6716 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
6718 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
6719 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
6720 systems with limited file name syntax.
6722 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
6723 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
6724 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
6727 (defvar save-completions-file-name
6728 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
6729 "*The filename to save completions to.")
6731 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
6732 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
6733 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
6734 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
6735 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
6737 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
6738 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
6739 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
6741 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
6742 marker from its buffer position.
6744 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
6745 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
6746 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
6748 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
6749 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
6750 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
6751 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
6752 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
6753 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
6755 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
6756 errors that happen often during editing.
6758 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
6759 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
6760 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
6762 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
6763 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
6765 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
6766 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
6767 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
6768 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
6769 and not get-buffer-window.
6771 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
6772 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
6773 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
6775 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
6776 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
6777 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
6778 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
6779 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
6780 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
6781 over and over for the same text.
6783 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
6785 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
6786 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
6788 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
6791 in addition to the normal
6795 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
6796 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
6797 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
6799 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
6801 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
6802 Copyright information:
6804 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6806 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
6807 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
6808 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
6809 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
6811 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
6812 of this document, or of portions of it,
6813 under the above conditions, provided also that they
6814 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
6818 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"