2 @c This is part of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
3 @c Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 @c See the file elisp.texi for copying conditions.
5 @node Antinews, Tips, System Interface, Top
6 @appendix Emacs 20 Antinews
8 For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about
9 downgrading to Emacs version 20.4. We hope you will enjoy the greater
10 simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 21 features. In
11 the following section, we carry this information back to Emacs
12 20.3, for which the previous printed edition of this manual was made.
14 @section Old Lisp Features in Emacs 20
18 The @code{push} and @code{pop} macros are not defined.
19 Neither are @code{dolist} and @code{dotimes}.
22 You can't display images in buffers. (Emacs is meant for editing text.)
23 With no images, there are no display margins, and no tool bars.
26 The @code{display} text property has no special meaning; you can use it
27 freely in Lisp programs, with no effects except what you implement for
28 yourself. With no images, who needs the @code{display} text property?
31 The @code{field} text property has no special meaning; buffers are no
32 longer subdivided into fields. (The division of information into
33 fields is always rather arbitrary.)
36 Faces have fewer attributes. The attributes @code{:family},
37 @code{:height}, @code{:width}, @code{:weight}, and @code{:slant},
38 have been replaced with a font name, a ``bold'' flag, and an
41 The attributes @code{:overline}, @code{:strike-through} and @code{:box}
42 have been eliminated too. Underlining now always has the same color as
43 the text---using any other color would be bad taste.
45 With fewer font attributes, there are no functions
46 @code{set-face-attribute} and @code{face-attribute}. Instead, you
47 access these attributes using functions such as @code{face-font}, and
48 set them with functions such as @code{set-face-font}. (These functions
49 were available in Emacs 21, but are not as useful there.)
52 The standard faces @code{scroll-bar}, @code{menu}, @code{border},
53 @code{cursor}, and @code{mouse} have been eliminated. They are rather
54 strange, as faces, and therefore shouldn't really exist. You can use
55 @code{set-border-color}, @code{set-cursor-color} and
56 @code{set-mouse-color} to specify the colors for the frame border, the
57 text cursor, and the mouse cursor. To specify menu colors, use X
61 Colors and other face attributes are no longer supported on character
62 terminals, so you no longer have to worry about terminals making faces
66 Emacs will respect your peace and quiet, aside from occasional beeps,
67 because there are no facilities for playing sounds.
70 Emacs 20 provides a complex and badly designed method for handling
71 character composition for languages such as Thai that display several
72 letters as a single combined image. We are too ashamed of it to tell
73 you any more than that.
76 @code{delete-and-extract-region} has been deleted; instead, use
77 @code{buffer-substring} to extract the text, then use
78 @code{delete-region} to delete it.
81 Regular expressions do not support the POSIX character classes
82 such as @samp{[:alpha:]}. All characters are created equal.
85 Hash tables have been eliminated; use alists instead.
88 The Lisp printer does not detect and report circular structure. That is
89 ok, because the Lisp reader cannot recreate circular structure anyway.
90 However, there is a library @samp{cust-print.el} which can report
94 Emacs provides its own implementation of scroll bars, instead
95 of using those of the X toolkit. They always use the frame foreground
96 and background colors, so you cannot specify different colors for
100 For simplicity, all @sc{ascii} characters now have the same height and width.
101 (Certain characters, such as Chinese characters, always have twice
102 the standard width.) All characters are created equal.
105 You can now resize any Emacs window, and size changes in one window can
106 propagate to all others. Windows can no longer use
107 @code{window-size-fixed} to get special privileges.
110 The function @code{intern-soft} no longer accepts a symbol as argument.
113 The function @code{bitmap-spec-p} has been renamed to
114 @code{pixmap-spec-p} to encourage users to practice Emacs' help system
115 while trying to find it.
118 Tooltips operate using ordinary Emacs frames.
121 Areas of the mode line are not mouse-sensitive; however, some mouse
122 commands are available for the mode line as a whole.
125 Windows cannot have header lines. Conversely, there is no way to turn
126 off the mode line of a window unless it is a minibuffer.
129 Plain dashes are the only separators you can use in a menu.
132 Vertical fractional scrolling does not exist.
135 The functions @code{format} and @code{message} ignore and discard text
139 The function @code{propertize} does not exist;
140 you can get the job done using @code{set-text-properties}.
143 Colors are supported only on window systems, not on text-only terminals.
144 So the support functions for colors on text-only terminals are
145 not needed, and have been eliminated.
148 The functions @code{color-values}, @code{color-defined-p} and
149 @code{defined-colors} have been renamed to @code{x-color-values},
150 @code{x-color-defined-p} and @code{x-defined-colors}.
153 Windows cannot be made fixed-width or fixed-height;
154 Emacs will adjust the size of all windows when it needs to.
157 The string used as the value of the @code{before-string} or
158 @code{after-string} property must contain only characters that display
159 as a single column---control characters, including tabs and newlines,
160 will give strange results.
163 The minibuffer prompt does not actually appear in content of the
164 minibuffer; it is displayed specially in the minibuffer window.
167 The ``exclusive open'' feature of @code{write-region}
168 has been eliminated; any non-@code{nil} value for the seventh
169 argument now means to ask the user for confirmation.
172 The function @code{buffer-size} always reports on the
176 The function @code{assoc-delete-all} has itself been deleted.
180 The keyword @code{:set-after} no longer does anything in
184 The variable @code{small-temporary-file-directory} has no special
185 meaning. There's only one variable for specifying which directory to
186 use for temporary files, @code{temporary-file-directory}, but not all
187 Emacs features use it anyway. Some use the @code{TMP} environment
188 variable, and some use the @code{TMPDIR} environment variable.
191 If the second argument of @code{save-some-buffers}, @var{pred}, is not
192 @code{nil}, then the precise value no longer matters. Any
193 non-@code{nil} value means the same as @code{t}: offer to save each
194 non-file buffer that has a non-@code{nil} value for
195 @code{buffer-offer-save}.
198 The variable @code{inhibit-modification-hooks}
199 has no special meaning.
202 The hook @code{fontification-functions} has been eliminated,
203 but there are other hooks, such as @code{window-scroll-functions},
204 that you can use to do a similar job.
207 The variable @code{redisplay-dont-pause}
208 has no special meaning.
211 The hook @code{calendar-move-hook} has been deleted.
214 The function @code{move-to-column} treats any non-@code{nil}
215 second argument just like @code{t}.
218 @section Old Lisp Features in Emacs 20.3
220 Here are the most important of the features that you will learn
221 to do without in Emacs 20.3:
223 Here are changes in the Lisp language itself:
227 The functions @code{line-beginning-position} and @code{line-end-position}
228 have been eliminated.
231 The functions @code{directory-files-and-attributes},
232 @code{file-attributes-lessp}, and @code{file-expand-wildcards}, have
236 The functions @code{decode-coding-region} and @code{encode-coding-region}
237 leave text properties untouched, in case that is useful. (It rarely makes
241 The functions @code{position-bytes} and @code{byte-to-position} have
245 Temporary buffers made with @code{with-output-to-temp-buffer} are now
246 modifiable by default, and use Fundamental mode rather than Help mode.
249 The functions @code{sref} interprets its @var{index} argument as a
250 number of bytes, not a number of characters. And the function
251 @code{char-bytes} actually tries to report on the number of bytes that a
255 The function @code{process-running-child-p} has been eliminated.
258 The function @code{interrupt-process} and similar functions no longer do
259 anything special when the second argument is @code{lambda}.
262 The function @code{define-prefix-command} accepts only two arguments.
265 The meaning of the second argument to @code{read-char},
266 @code{read-event}, and @code{read-char-exclusive} has been reversed:
267 they use the current input method if the argument is if @code{nil}.
270 The function @code{with-temp-message} has been eliminated.
273 The function @code{clear-this-command-keys} has been eliminated.
276 The functions @code{gap-position} and @code{gap-size} have been eliminated.
279 In @code{modify-face}, an argument of @code{(nil)} has no special
283 The base64 conversion functions have been eliminated.
286 Wildcard support has been eliminated from @code{find-file}
287 and allied functions.
290 @code{file-attributes} returns the file size and the file inode number
291 only as a simple integer.