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authorGerd Moellmann2000-08-14 16:30:59 +0000
committerGerd Moellmann2000-08-14 16:30:59 +0000
commitd874e91353cb3dacc5e65d01c776c3386838dd6f (patch)
treee264641e4c1e36c623eeecb1fab43ab272b23b12
parent4eb22d33e48bea14996610cc3f3223fe40aff41e (diff)
downloademacs-d874e91353cb3dacc5e65d01c776c3386838dd6f.tar.gz
emacs-d874e91353cb3dacc5e65d01c776c3386838dd6f.zip
*** empty log message ***
-rw-r--r--etc/NEWS4984
-rw-r--r--etc/NEWS.15006
2 files changed, 5010 insertions, 4980 deletions
diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 078d45f7c93..3f56dcf435f 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000 1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3See the end for copying conditions. 3See the end for copying conditions.
4 4
5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. 5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6For older news, see the file ONEWS. 6For older news, see the file NEWS.1.
7 7
8 8
9* Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1 9* Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
18to list them. 18to list them.
19 19
20** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs 20** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
21Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if they these are available. 21Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
22 22
23** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit 23** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
24Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available. 24Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
@@ -3440,4985 +3440,9 @@ to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3440overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is 3440overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3441horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't 3441horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3442support a vertical-bar cursor). 3442support a vertical-bar cursor).
3443^L
3444* Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3445 3443
3446** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3447input.
3448
3449** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3450
3451** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3452
3453** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3454only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3455exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3456(e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3457(e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3458
3459** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3460been added.
3461
3462^L
3463* Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3464
3465** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3466
3467^L
3468* Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3469
3470** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3471M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3472
3473* Changes in Emacs 20.4
3474
3475** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3476
3477You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3478Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3479`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3480
3481If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3482is the one that is used.
3483
3484** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3485the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3486Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3487separate from the command's regular output.
3488Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3489says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3490In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3491the buffer name.
3492
3493When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3494output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3495it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3496cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3497
3498** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3499the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3500is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3501created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3502
3503** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3504example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3505match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3506quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3507
3508** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3509now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3510if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3511they never ignore case.
3512
3513** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3514under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3515applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3516of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3517just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3518convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3519part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3520
3521If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3522the same format that was used in the file before.
3523
3524You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3525`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3526
3527** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3528renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3529This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3530
3531** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3532The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3533buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3534your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3535is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3536end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3537Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3538
3539The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3540eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3541control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3542format. You can now customize these variables.
3543
3544** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3545filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3546filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3547enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3548
3549** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3550in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3551windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3552
3553** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3554dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3555doesn't have any effect.
3556
3557** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3558not one per buffer.
3559
3560** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3561use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3562 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3563
3564** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3565To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3566`auto-show-mode' command.
3567
3568** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3569avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3570versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3571choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3572occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3573
3574** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3575cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3576
3577** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3578character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3579feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3580
3581** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3582the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3583interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3584and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3585
3586** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3587
3588The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3589that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3590one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3591codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3592set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3593
3594Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3595from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3596
3597IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3598equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3599a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3600`?' on other systems.
3601
3602IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3603feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3604Unix.
3605
3606Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3607current codepage when it starts.
3608
3609** Mail changes
3610
3611*** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3612`mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3613appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3614non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3615MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3616headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3617latin-1:
3618
3619 MIME-version: 1.0
3620 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3621 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3622
3623*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3624default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3625default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3626sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3627buffer-file-coding-system.
3628
3629You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3630sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3631mail.
3632
3633*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3634if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3635Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3636list of possible coding systems.
3637
3638** CC Mode changes
3639
3640*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3641modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3642longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3643docstring for details.
3644
3645*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3646symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3647found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3648prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3649lineup functions use this feature currently.
3650
3651*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3652"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3653
3654*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3655"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3656
3657*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3658from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3659symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3660c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3661anonymous classes.
3662
3663*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3664syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3665
3666*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3667inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3668support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3669function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3670
3671*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3672(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3673brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3674c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3675(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3676
3677*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3678
3679*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3680
3681*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3682for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3683
3684*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3685
3686*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3687associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3688This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3689circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3690class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3691
3692** Gnus changes.
3693
3694*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3695added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3696Gnus manual for the full story.
3697
3698*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3699before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3700group, which is created automatically.
3701
3702*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3703values.
3704
3705*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3706
3707*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3708outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3709
3710*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3711`C-u C-c C-c'.
3712
3713*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3714
3715*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3716re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3717
3718*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3719
3720*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3721Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3722
3723*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3724`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3725
3726*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3727control over simplification.
3728
3729*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3730
3731*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3732limit.
3733
3734*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3735
3736*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3737
3738*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3739If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3740rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3741
3742*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3743`a' forces normal posting method.
3744
3745*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3746-- `W d'.
3747
3748*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3749to a non-nil value.
3750
3751*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3752where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3753
3754*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3755has been added.
3756
3757*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3758
3759*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3760
3761*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3762`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3763
3764*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3765`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3766
3767*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3768
3769*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3770been added.
3771
3772*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3773`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3774
3775*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3776updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3777
3778*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3779
3780*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3781
3782*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3783
3784** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3785
3786*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3787options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3788nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3789
3790*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3791TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3792of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3793TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3794can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3795
3796*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3797All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3798but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3799the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3800
3801*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3802the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3803buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3804mismatch.
3805
3806** Changes to RefTeX mode
3807
3808*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3809file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3810
3811*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3812lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3813characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3814removed from the label.
3815
3816*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3817a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3818
3819*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3820customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3821
3822*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3823`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3824expressions.
3825
3826*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3827
3828** New/deleted modes and packages
3829
3830*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3831SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3832
3833*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3834editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3835SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3836
3837*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3838changes with a special face.
3839
3840*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3841this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3842Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3843
3844* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3845
3846** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3847This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3848conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3849and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3850check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3851
3852The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3853Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3854distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3855
3856** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3857MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3858controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3859directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3860Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3861on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3862string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3863program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3864printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3865
3866** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3867output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3868available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3869input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3870temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3871program.
3872
3873An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3874and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3875programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3876automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3877as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3878ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3879
3880** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3881a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3882MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3883was not documented clearly before.
3884
3885** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3886This includes Tetris and Snake.
3887
3888* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3889
3890** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3891return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3892They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3893meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3894
3895** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3896WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3897and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3898
3899** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3900
3901*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3902It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3903
3904*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3905the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3906integers.
3907
3908** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3909files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3910arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3911file names and attributes are returned.
3912
3913** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3914sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3915accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3916It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3917returns the result.
3918
3919** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3920to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3921
3922** New functions for base64 conversion:
3923
3924The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3925into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3926performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3927optionally.
3928
3929Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3930job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3931
3932**
3933The new function process-running-child-p
3934will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3935terminal to its own child process.
3936
3937** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3938when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3939to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3940itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3941
3942** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3943be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3944
3945** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3946:included is an alias for :visible.
3947
3948easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3949easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3950to move or copy menu entries.
3951
3952** Multibyte editing changes
3953
3954*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3955an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3956make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3957work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3958char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3959 (setq char (sref str idx)
3960 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3961The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3962
3963If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3964(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3965 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3966
3967*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3968region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3969deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3970
3971 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3972
3973This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3974across the boundary.
3975
3976*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3977`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3978 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3979 contains 8-bit characters.
3980 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3981 contains invalid characters.
3982
3983*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3984text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3985preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3986text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3987way.
3988
3989*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3990If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3991end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3992prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3993
3994*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3995compose Thai characters in a string.
3996
3997** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3998argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3999for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4000menus should always use the third argument.
4001
4002** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4003read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4004arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4005input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4006
4007** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4008of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4009programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4010inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4011
4012** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4013the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4014returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4015echo area contents.
4016
4017 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4018
4019** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4020NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4021requested feature cannot be loaded.
4022
4023** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4024foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4025means to clear out that attribute.
4026
4027** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4028gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4029
4030** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4031read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4032unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4033end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4034
4035** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4036the gap of the current buffer.
4037
4038** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4039to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4040current buffer.
4041
4042** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4043facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4044These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4045it back in after any modifications have been made.
4046
4047* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4048
4049** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4050the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4051/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4052directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4053subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4054
4055Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4056names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4057Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4058which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4059these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4060
4061Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4062starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4063time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4064
4065This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4066Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4067to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4068subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4069`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4070results.
4071
4072** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4073GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4074that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4075fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4076
4077* Changes in Emacs 20.3
4078
4079** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4080including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4081it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4082perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4083
4084** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4085specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4086region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4087further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4088command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4089within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4090are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4091region.
4092
4093In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4094selective undo.
4095
4096** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4097unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4098buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4099effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4100Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4101
4102The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4103though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4104-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4105load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4106
4107** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4108no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4109enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4110something that most users not do.
4111
4112** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4113operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4114The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4115applications.
4116
4117C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4118pasting operations.
4119
4120** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4121setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4122like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4123printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4124`ps-printer-name'.
4125
4126** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4127minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4128any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4129except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4130incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4131hits a new word.
4132
4133Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4134Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4135to be confused by TeX commands.
4136
4137You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4138correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4139clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4140of various alternative replacements and actions.
4141
4142Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4143the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4144corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4145alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4146flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4147
4148Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4149flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4150
4151** Changes in input method usage.
4152
4153Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4154the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4155respectively.
4156
4157You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4158
4159If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4160of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4161
4162The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4163that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4164
4165 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4166
4167 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4168
4169 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4170 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4171
4172 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4173 given in the following case:
4174 o When you are using a complex input method.
4175 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4176
4177If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4178input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4179and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4180setting it to t is helpful.
4181
4182The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4183
4184In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4185keys:
4186 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4187 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4188 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4189These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4190environment.
4191
4192** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4193names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4194minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4195get
4196
4197 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4198
4199which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4200
4201Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4202Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4203
4204** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4205at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4206its owner and group.
4207
4208** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4209Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4210
4211** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4212contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4213
4214** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4215which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4216in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4217by the left edge of the rectangle.
4218
4219** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4220increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4221C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4222for writing keyboard macros.
4223
4224** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4225files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4226frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4227the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4228additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4229info.
4230
4231** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4232
4233** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4234query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4235contents only.
4236
4237** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4238confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4239the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4240says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4241
4242** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4243non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4244literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4245
4246** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4247now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4248Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4249inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4250
4251** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4252failure if the command produces no output.
4253
4254** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4255manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4256the mouse.
4257
4258** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4259mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4260function and variable names.
4261
4262** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4263reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4264file-coding-system-alist.
4265
4266** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4267t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4268converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4269the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4270according to the current fontset.
4271
4272** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4273
4274The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4275that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4276nonascii-insert-offset.
4277
4278For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4279enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4280nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4281characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4282
4283** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4284an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4285
4286** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4287letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4288
4289** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4290are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4291command keys.
4292
4293** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4294user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4295
4296Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4297user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4298all variables that have documentation.
4299
4300** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4301shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4302that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4303minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4304it should show; the default is 20.
4305
4306Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4307the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4308of your input.
4309
4310** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4311all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4312recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4313argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4314the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4315Newly added options are included as well.
4316
4317If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4318then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4319for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4320
4321This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4322Customize menu.
4323
4324** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4325the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4326
4327** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4328buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4329invoked.
4330
4331** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4332that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4333The default is 1.
4334
4335** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4336syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4337new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4338(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4339sensibly.
4340
4341** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4342
4343** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4344value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4345two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4346
4347** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4348reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4349for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4350every night.
4351
4352** Desktop changes
4353
4354*** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4355the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4356
4357*** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4358and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4359
4360** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4361read and post multi-lingual articles.
4362
4363** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4364doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4365be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4366outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4367the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4368made invisible again.
4369
4370** Mail reading and sending changes
4371
4372*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4373the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4374changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4375toggle.
4376
4377*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4378now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4379summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4380the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4381rmail-default-body-file.
4382
4383*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4384longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4385handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4386
4387*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4388it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4389is evaluated to insert the signature.
4390
4391*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4392outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4393handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4394putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4395transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4396especially interested in trying feedmail.
4397
4398feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4399feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4400provided by feedmail are:
4401
4402**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4403stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4404there is also a queue for draft messages
4405
4406**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4407be prompted for confirmation
4408
4409**** does smart filling of address headers
4410
4411**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4412the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4413can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4414
4415**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4416the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4417/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4418function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4419
4420** Dired changes
4421
4422*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4423files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4424
4425*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4426run Dired on the directory name at point.
4427
4428*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4429files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4430for a specified regexp.
4431
4432** VC Changes
4433
4434*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4435conveniently.
4436
4437*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4438faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4439Dired.
4440
4441VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4442directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4443listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4444currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4445
4446You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4447then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4448vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4449control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4450on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4451
4452All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4453is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4454`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4455the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4456`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4457
4458The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4459toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4460VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4461`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4462
4463Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4464ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4465command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4466
4467*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4468file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4469session to resolve them.
4470
4471Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4472resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4473contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4474uses as well).
4475
4476*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4477command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4478you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4479either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4480branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4481If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4482using ediff.
4483
4484** Changes in Font Lock
4485
4486*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4487are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4488use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4489unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4490compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4491
4492** Frame name display changes
4493
4494*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4495frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4496raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4497when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4498
4499*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4500frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4501menu.
4502
4503** Comint (subshell) changes
4504
4505*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4506subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4507with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4508
4509*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4510
4511C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4512that is, the line after the last line you got.
4513You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4514
4515C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4516send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4517the following line.
4518
4519C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4520which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4521previously sent input.
4522
4523C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4524it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4525as the search string.
4526
4527*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4528automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4529
4530** C mode changes
4531
4532*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4533and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4534assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4535definition.
4536
4537*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4538(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4539Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4540style is still the default however.
4541
4542*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4543
4544*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4545are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4546them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4547
4548*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4549and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4550
4551*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4552namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4553
4554*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4555makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4556
4557*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4558c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4559
4560*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4561should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4562package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4563variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4564
4565** Changes to hippie-expand.
4566
4567*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4568non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4569which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4570
4571*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4572non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4573expanding dynamically.
4574
4575*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4576non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4577
4578*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4579non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4580this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4581expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4582
4583*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4584
4585** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4586
4587*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4588bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4589automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4590bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4591against the first word in the title.
4592
4593*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4594capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4595bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4596lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4597lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4598bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4599
4600*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4601generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4602replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4603bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4604
4605** Changes in vcursor.el.
4606
4607*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4608and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4609variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4610entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4611`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4612in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4613
4614*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4615Editing group once the package is loaded.
4616
4617*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4618generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4619vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4620
4621*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4622vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4623
4624** Ispell changes.
4625
4626*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4627buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4628are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4629
4630*** Generic region skipping implemented.
4631A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4632and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4633defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4634include:
4635
4636 o URLs are automatically skipped
4637 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4638
4639*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4640
4641** Changes to RefTeX mode
4642
4643RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4644large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4645re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4646section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4647
4648*** New recursive parser.
4649
4650The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4651entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4652recursive parser scans the individual files.
4653
4654*** Parsing only part of a document.
4655
4656Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4657partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4658the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4659
4660 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4661
4662*** Storing parsing information in a file.
4663
4664This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4665
4666 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4667
4668*** Using multiple selection buffers
4669
4670If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4671for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4672
4673 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4674
4675*** References to external documents.
4676
4677The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4678documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4679documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4680macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4681RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4682the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4683The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4684
4685*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4686
4687The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4688and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4689
4690Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4691the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4692
4693*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4694
4695The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4696buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4697
4698*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4699
4700The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4701contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4702`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4703have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4704enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4705at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4706more.
4707
4708*** Support for the varioref package
4709
4710The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4711
4712*** New hooks
4713
4714Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4715and citations are created. These hooks are
4716`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4717`reftex-format-cite-function'.
4718
4719*** Citations outside LaTeX
4720
4721The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4722a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4723
4724*** Short context is no longer fontified.
4725
4726The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4727fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4728fontified, use
4729
4730 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4731
4732** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4733With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4734the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4735directories that contain the same file name.
4736
4737Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4738Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4739file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4740Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4741have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4742names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4743directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4744directory.
4745
4746** New modes and packages
4747
4748*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4749It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4750it, but some do not.
4751
4752*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4753code.
4754
4755*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4756current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4757around in a buffer.
4758
4759Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4760
4761*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4762uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4763be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4764established system of notation similar to Chess.
4765
4766*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4767documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4768guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4769
4770*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4771available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4772system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4773simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4774functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4775the like.
4776
4777*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4778identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4779
4780*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4781within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4782used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4783the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4784
4785*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4786
4787 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4788 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4789 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4790 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4791 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4792 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4793 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4794 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4795 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4796 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4797 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4798
4799 Platform-specific modes:
4800
4801 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4802 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4803 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4804 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4805 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4806 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4807 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4808 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4809 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4810
4811* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4812
4813** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4814use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4815That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4816Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4817
4818Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4819you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4820consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4821
4822** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4823and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4824specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4825searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4826
4827** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4828multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4829character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4830environment.
4831
4832** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4833take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4834string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4835current input method for reading this one event.
4836
4837** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4838now control whether to output certain characters as
4839backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4840non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4841characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4842in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4843
4844* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4845
4846** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4847of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4848
4849** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4850in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4851always increases point by 1.
4852
4853The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4854considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4855
4856See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4857
4858** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4859Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4860default value changed. For example,
4861
4862 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4863 :type 'integer
4864 :group 'foo
4865 :version "20.3")
4866
4867 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4868 :version "20.3")
4869
4870If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4871default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4872is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4873`:version' in the top level group.
4874
4875This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4876
4877** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4878starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4879
4880However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4881symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4882support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4883to themselves.
4884
4885If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4886this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4887values whatever.
4888
4889** There is a new debugger command, R.
4890It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4891in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4892
4893** Frame-local variables.
4894
4895You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4896the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4897local bindings for that variable.
4898
4899These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4900frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4901modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4902parameter name.
4903
4904Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4905Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4906active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4907that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4908
4909It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4910clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4911very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4912through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4913
4914** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4915"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4916evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4917makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4918See the documentation in sregex.el.
4919
4920** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4921is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4922parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4923The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4924
4925** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4926If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4927
4928** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4929known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4930define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4931
4932** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4933when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4934it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4935history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4936
4937The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4938return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4939empty input.
4940
4941** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4942for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4943`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4944Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4945`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4946
4947** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4948echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4949a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4950default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4951
4952** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4953specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4954function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4955place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4956non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4957
4958** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4959If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4960up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4961end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4962
4963** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4964which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4965If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4966
4967** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4968holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4969was directed to display this buffer.
4970
4971** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4972with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4973describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4974other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4975set-window-configuration.
4976
4977** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4978window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4979positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4980windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4981
4982** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4983override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4984look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4985
4986If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4987non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4988map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4989
4990minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4991and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4992
4993** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4994except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4995
4996** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4997USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4998floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4999
5000** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5001to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5002in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5003it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5004
5005** Menu changes
5006
5007*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5008keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5009better supported.
5010
5011The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5012a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5013you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5014can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5015then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5016
5017*** A new format for menu items is supported.
5018
5019In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5020 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5021defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5022starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5023
5024The format is:
5025 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5026 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5027where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5028string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5029The supported properties include
5030
5031:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5032 item is enabled.
5033:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5034 item should appear in the menu.
5035:filter FILTER-FN
5036 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5037 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5038 It should return a binding to use instead.
5039:keys DESCRIPTION
5040 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5041 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5042 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5043:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5044 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5045 keyboard binding.
5046:key-sequence nil
5047 This means that the command normally has no
5048 keyboard equivalent.
5049:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5050:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5051 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5052 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5053 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5054
5055Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5056Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5057
5058(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5059
5060** New event types
5061
5062*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5063mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5064corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5065which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5066
5067 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5068
5069where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5070same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5071indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5072negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5073the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5074forward, away from the user.
5075
5076As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5077
5078*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5079files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5080and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5081filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5082loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5083
5084 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5085
5086where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5087same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5088that were dragged and dropped.
5089
5090As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5091
5092** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5093
5094*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5095any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5096to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5097
5098*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5099can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5100that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5101
5102*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5103in Emacs 19 and before.
5104
5105The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5106The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5107
5108*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5109buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5110unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5111representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5112
5113This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5114as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5115viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5116one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5117will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5118
5119This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5120representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5121(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5122consistent with the new representation.
5123
5124*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5125representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5126about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5127however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5128
5129The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5130nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5131using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5132
5133*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5134representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5135representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5136
5137The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5138loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5139is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5140
5141*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5142which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5143
5144*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5145which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5146
5147*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5148portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5149so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5150You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5151
5152*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5153it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5154
5155*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5156convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5157buffer or string being searched.
5158
5159One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5160[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5161searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5162searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5163obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5164you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5165expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5166
5167*** Structure of coding system changed.
5168
5169All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5170by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5171which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5172as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5173vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5174your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5175define-coding-system-alias.
5176
5177The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5178the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5179access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5180pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5181character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5182safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5183'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5184`iso-8859-1'.
5185
5186Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5187The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5188coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5189(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5190
5191Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5192also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5193are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5194the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5195
5196*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5197proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5198This function requires a user interaction.
5199
5200*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5201find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5202select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5203systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5204a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5205select-safe-coding-system.
5206
5207*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5208decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5209last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5210was done.
5211
5212*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5213used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5214coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5215
5216*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5217return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5218characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5219`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5220
5221*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5222coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5223coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5224converted.
5225
5226*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5227coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5228
5229*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5230character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5231character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5232each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5233either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5234range of characters.
5235
5236*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5237Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5238
5239*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5240in the current buffer at position POS.
5241
5242*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5243input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5244function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5245character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5246event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5247binding input-method-function to nil.
5248
5249The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5250method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5251input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5252the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5253not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5254
5255The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5256subsequent events of a key sequence.
5257
5258*** You can customize any language environment by using
5259set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5260
5261The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5262customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5263instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5264environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5265exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5266
5267* Changes in Emacs 20.1
5268
5269** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5270options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5271at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5272tree structure.
5273
5274M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5275user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5276
5277With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5278session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5279in your .emacs file.)
5280
5281** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5282You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5283
5284** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5285This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5286
5287** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5288immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5289kills the region.
5290
5291The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5292delete the character before point, as usual.
5293
5294** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5295on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5296by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5297
5298** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5299insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5300the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5301onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5302history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5303past.)
5304
5305** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5306This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5307in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5308TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5309makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5310
5311As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5312and is an alias for it.
5313
5314If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5315use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5316
5317** Scrolling changes
5318
5319*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5320position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5321
5322In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5323on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5324where it started.
5325
5326*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5327move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5328screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5329does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5330
5331*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5332top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5333comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5334recenters the window.
5335
5336** International character set support (MULE)
5337
5338Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5339including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5340Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5341Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5342features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5343MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5344
5345Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5346coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5347character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5348variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5349into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5350
5351Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5352generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5353supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5354language, to make it possible to type them.
5355
5356The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5357character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5358
5359The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5360to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5361
5362You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5363
5364 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5365
5366Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5367characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5368argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5369already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5370characters for their work until they want to change.
5371
5372*** Input methods
5373
5374An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5375specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5376has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5377the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5378support several input methods.
5379
5380The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5381another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5382work.
5383
5384A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5385characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5386composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5387consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5388sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5389letter.
5390
5391The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5392by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5393First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5394marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5395mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5396
5397None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5398they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5399phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5400converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5401
5402Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5403word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5404typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5405the first guess is wrong.
5406
5407*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5408turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5409
5410If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5411byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5412they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5413the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5414
5415However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5416use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5417includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5418translate automatically to and from either one.
5419
5420*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5421
5422Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5423file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5424sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5425what you want.
5426
5427If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5428example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5429system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5430multibyte characters in that buffer.
5431
5432If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5433character conversion as well.
5434
5435*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5436
5437A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5438Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5439requires using many fonts.
5440
5441Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5442collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5443
5444A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5445the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5446have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5447you would use a font.
5448
5449If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5450specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5451display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5452
5453The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5454(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5455characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5456or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5457and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5458
5459*** Defining fontsets.
5460
5461Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5462chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5463with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5464
5465Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5466of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5467`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5468standard fontset are created automatically.
5469
5470If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5471argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5472FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5473with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5474name is `fontset-startup'.
5475
5476Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5477The resource value should have this form:
5478 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5479FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5480 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5481 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5482 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5483The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5484of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5485CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5486FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5487
5488Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5489last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5490You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5491
5492For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5493font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5494following resource,
5495 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5496the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5497 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5498Here is the substitution rule:
5499 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5500 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5501 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5502 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5503 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5504
5505The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5506fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5507that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5508
5509With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5510like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5511name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5512fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5513fontsets.
5514
5515*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5516defaults for a particular choice of language.
5517
5518Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5519method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5520visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5521already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5522language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5523system for new files that you create.
5524
5525It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5526set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5527whole Emacs session.
5528
5529For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5530chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5531with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5532
5533*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5534specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5535specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5536the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5537coding systems that Emacs supports.
5538
5539*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5540lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5541This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5542After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5543is used for *the immediately following command*.
5544
5545So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5546write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5547
5548If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5549then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5550
5551For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5552visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5553
5554*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5555construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5556to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5557specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5558of the file.
5559
5560*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5561the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5562code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5563translated into that character code.
5564
5565This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5566various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5567
5568By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5569
5570*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5571the coding system for keyboard input.
5572
5573Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5574with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5575some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5576
5577By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5578
5579Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5580input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5581translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5582to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5583designed to work with terminals.
5584
5585*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5586specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5587This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5588has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5589translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5590in the corresponding buffer.
5591
5592By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5593
5594*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5595to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5596It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5597
5598*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5599an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5600command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5601want to use.
5602
5603C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5604method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5605
5606*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5607layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5608remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5609which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5610
5611*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5612the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5613related information.
5614
5615*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5616HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5617scripts.
5618
5619*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5620information about the support for a particular language.
5621You specify the language as an argument.
5622
5623*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5624the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5625first dash.
5626
5627A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5628(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5629whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
56301 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5631
5632 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5633 B big5 (Chinese)
5634 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5635 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5636 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5637 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5638 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5639 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5640 K euc-korea (Korean)
5641 R koi8 (Russian)
5642 Q tibetan
5643 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5644 T lao
5645 T tis620 (Thai)
5646 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5647 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5648 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5649 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5650 z hz (Chinese)
5651
5652When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5653two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5654coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5655keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5656
5657*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5658conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5659
5660When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5661into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5662rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5663Rmail files themselves.
5664
5665*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5666conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5667
5668Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5669for sending mail:
5670
5671- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5672- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5673- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5674 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5675- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5676
5677*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5678to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5679Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5680translations.
5681
5682** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5683of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5684insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5685without any conversion.
5686
5687** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5688You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5689RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5690any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5691
5692** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5693functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5694
5695Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5696Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5697
5698Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5699mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5700
5701** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5702complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5703in the buffer before point.
5704
5705With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5706symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5707you are using.
5708
5709With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5710just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5711
5712** File locking works with NFS now.
5713
5714The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5715in the same directory as FILENAME.
5716
5717This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5718works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5719can become a bottleneck.
5720
5721The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5722does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5723create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5724file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5725rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5726so useful that the change is worth while.
5727
5728When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5729are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5730collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5731tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5732
5733** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5734it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5735show-paren-mode.
5736
5737** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5738selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5739delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5740
5741** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5742within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5743complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5744
5745** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5746it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5747set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5748
5749** Changes in View mode.
5750
5751*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5752Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5753
5754*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5755view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5756
5757*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5758previous state.
5759
5760*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5761scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5762
5763*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5764non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5765not just the selected window.
5766
5767*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5768read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5769turns View mode on or off.
5770
5771*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5772how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5773delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5774
5775** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5776now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5777
5778** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5779has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5780presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5781which version to compare with.
5782
5783** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5784blocks if a match is inside the block.
5785
5786The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5787is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5788isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5789shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5790
5791By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5792of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5793blocks, all of them or none.
5794
5795** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5796current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5797confirmation first.
5798
5799** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5800now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5801However, the mode will not be changed if
5802(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5803(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5804 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5805(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5806
5807This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5808
5809However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5810these commands do not change the major mode.
5811
5812** M-x occur changes.
5813
5814*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5815it performs a case-sensitive search.
5816
5817*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5818if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5819using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5820
5821** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5822in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5823window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5824that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5825buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5826
5827** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5828after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5829appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5830come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5831
5832** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5833selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5834buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5835
5836** Outline mode changes.
5837
5838*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5839
5840*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5841
5842** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5843you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5844Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5845was already active.
5846
5847The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5848unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5849get confused by it.
5850
5851If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5852set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5853
5854** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5855
5856*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5857conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5858character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5859including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5860
5861The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5862mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5863copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5864
5865*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5866are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5867values.
5868
5869`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5870case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5871`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5872case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5873
5874** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5875certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5876can be. The default value is 30.
5877
5878** Changes in Mail mode.
5879
5880*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5881Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5882composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5883`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5884`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5885behavior.
5886
5887C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5888compose-mail-other-frame.
5889
5890*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5891the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5892replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5893buffer that shows the original message.
5894
5895*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5896with separator lines around the contents.
5897
5898*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5899in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5900definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5901need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5902
5903*** New features in the mail-complete command.
5904
5905**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5906for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5907controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5908Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5909
5910**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5911to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5912/etc/passwd.
5913
5914**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5915to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5916/etc/passwd.
5917
5918** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5919special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5920directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5921reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5922
5923Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5924when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5925be taken to be magic.
5926
5927** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5928files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5929available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5930
5931M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5932(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5933
5934** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5935suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5936
5937In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5938
5939new key dired.el binding old key
5940------- ---------------- -------
5941 * c dired-change-marks c
5942 * m dired-mark m
5943 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5944 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5945 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5946 * u dired-unmark u
5947 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5948 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5949 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5950 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5951 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5952 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5953
5954** Rmail changes.
5955
5956*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5957saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5958chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5959each time you run it.
5960
5961*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5962whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5963
5964*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5965messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5966means to move in the opposite direction.
5967
5968*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5969you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5970
5971*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5972just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5973It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5974can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5975for output.
5976
5977** Gnus changes.
5978
5979*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5980
5981*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5982Gnus.
5983
5984*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5985`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5986
5987*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5988article mode line.
5989
5990*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5991
5992*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5993
5994(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5995
5996*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5997are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5998`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5999
6000*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6001
6002*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6003
6004*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6005See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6006
6007*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6008Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6009used to pick articles.
6010
6011*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6012another have been added.
6013
6014 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6015
6016*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6017generating lines in buffers.
6018
6019*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6020`M-C-_'.
6021
6022*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6023
6024*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6025
6026 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6027
6028*** Scores can be decayed.
6029
6030 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6031
6032*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6033Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6034
6035*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6036the native server.
6037
6038 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6039
6040*** A new command for reading collections of documents
6041(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6042
6043*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6044
6045*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6046even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6047
6048*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6049(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6050
6051 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6052 a group.
6053
6054*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6055sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6056
6057 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6058
6059*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6060
6061 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6062
6063*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6064
6065 Use the `Y c' command.
6066
6067*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6068
6069*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6070
6071 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6072
6073*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6074from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6075
6076 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6077
6078*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6079
6080*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6081the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6082
6083 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6084
6085Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6086and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6087from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6088hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6089this issue.)
6090
6091Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6092automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6093particular news group. This can be done by:
6094
6095 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6096
6097Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6098of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6099"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6100system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6101for reading and posting).
6102
6103CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6104 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6105Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6106newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6107there.
6108
6109Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6110default. Here are some of these default settings:
6111
6112 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6113 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6114 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6115 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6116 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6117
6118When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6119the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6120
6121** CC mode changes.
6122
6123*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6124code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6125values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6126this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6127Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6128loaded.
6129
6130If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6131Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6132style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6133share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6134c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6135must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6136
6137*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6138of the current buffer.
6139
6140*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6141it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6142of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6143
6144*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6145style that the Python developers like.
6146
6147*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6148This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6149just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6150
6151** VC Changes [new]
6152
6153** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6154name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6155directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6156
6157This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6158master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6159developers.
6160
6161You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6162RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6163
6164*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6165other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6166writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6167calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6168
6169*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6170version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6171
6172** Calendar changes.
6173
6174A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6175of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6176for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6177
6178** ps-print changes
6179
6180There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6181
6182*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6183
6184The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6185formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6186`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6187`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6188It defaults to `letter'.
6189If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6190
6191The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6192of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6193non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6194
6195The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6196It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6197It defaults to 1.
6198
6199*** Horizontal layout
6200
6201The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6202`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6203All are measured in points.
6204
6205*** Vertical layout
6206
6207The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6208`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6209All are measured in points.
6210
6211*** Headers
6212
6213If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6214`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6215margin above the text.
6216
6217If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6218framing box is printed around the header.
6219
6220The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6221`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6222
6223The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6224`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6225`ps-header-font-size'.
6226
6227*** Font managing
6228
6229The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6230used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6231`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6232elements to this alist.
6233
6234The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6235for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6236
6237** hideshow changes.
6238
6239*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6240C++, ; for lisp).
6241
6242*** Support for java-mode added.
6243
6244*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6245in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6246
6247*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6248the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6249way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6250
6251*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6252robust and a lot faster.
6253
6254*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6255
6256*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6257to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6258documentation for more details.
6259
6260** Changes in Enriched mode.
6261
6262*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6263filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6264of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6265use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6266the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6267
6268*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6269distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6270as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6271as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6272
6273** Font Lock mode
6274
6275*** Custom support
6276
6277The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6278font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6279faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6280group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6281your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6282consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6283
6284You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6285
6286*** Maximum decoration
6287
6288Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6289default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6290of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6291supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6292to get the old behavior.
6293
6294*** New support
6295
6296Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6297
6298Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6299support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6300
6301*** Configurable support
6302
6303Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6304additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6305c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6306java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6307list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6308of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6309convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6310
6311Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6312way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6313it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6314
6315*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6316
6317You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6318highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6319for any mode.
6320
6321For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6322
6323 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6324
6325in your ~/.emacs.
6326
6327*** New faces
6328
6329Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6330font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6331distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6332to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6333
6334*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6335
6336The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6337cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6338same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6339
6340*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6341
6342The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6343according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6344the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6345non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6346refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6347the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6348Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6349
6350This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6351For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6352this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6353refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6354containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6355the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6356
6357As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6358
6359Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6360Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6361Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6362new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6363
6364If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6365settings.
6366
6367** Ada mode changes.
6368
6369*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6370If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6371procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6372you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6373stubs.
6374
6375*** There are two new commands:
6376 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6377 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6378
6379The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6380`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6381`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6382
6383*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6384is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6385Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6386
6387*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6388formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6389places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6390space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6391
6392** Scheme mode changes.
6393
6394*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6395mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6396for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6397with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6398have any effect.
6399
6400If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6401still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6402scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6403variables as buffer-local variables.
6404
6405*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6406Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6407
6408** Changes to the emacsclient program
6409
6410*** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6411USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6412associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6413can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6414
6415*** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6416it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6417buffer in Emacs.
6418
6419*** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6420use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6421ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6422option takes precedence.
6423
6424** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6425constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6426(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6427
6428** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6429which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6430the current defun.
6431
6432** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6433following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6434
6435** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6436and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6437necessary).
6438
6439** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6440if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6441these register values no longer become completely useless.
6442If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6443asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6444it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6445
6446** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6447example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6448be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6449you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6450
6451You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6452variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6453file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6454revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6455only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6456
6457** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6458since it applies only to the current frame.
6459
6460** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6461file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6462and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6463
6464This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6465multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6466variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6467tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6468instead of just the file you are editing.
6469
6470** RefTeX mode
6471
6472RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6473and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6474different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6475multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6476turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6477
6478C-c ( reftex-label
6479 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6480 knows which kind of label is needed.
6481
6482C-c ) reftex-reference
6483 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6484 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6485
6486C-c [ reftex-citation
6487 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6488 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6489
6490C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6491 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6492
6493C-c = reftex-toc
6494 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6495 can quickly jump to every section.
6496
6497Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6498commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6499Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6500reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6501C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6502
6503** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6504
6505*** Info documentation is now available.
6506
6507*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6508both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6509
6510*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6511bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6512
6513*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6514(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6515
6516*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6517entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6518appropriate functions.
6519
6520*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6521entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6522
6523*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6524been cleaned.
6525
6526*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6527bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6528
6529*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6530shall be delimited.
6531
6532*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6533bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6534bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6535
6536*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6537field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6538prefixed with `ALT'.
6539
6540*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6541bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6542formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6543documentation).
6544
6545*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6546documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6547for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6548
6549*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6550comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6551
6552*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6553alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6554signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6555
6556*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6557
6558*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6559
6560*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6561from alien sources.
6562
6563*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6564to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6565crossref entries.
6566
6567*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6568region.
6569
6570*** Added support for imenu.
6571
6572*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6573of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6574`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6575`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6576
6577*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6578from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6579
6580** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6581
6582** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6583
6584** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6585functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6586Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6587as an argument.
6588
6589When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6590and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6591
6592** browse-url changes
6593
6594*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6595Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6596(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6597non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6598customization variables.
6599
6600*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6601
6602*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6603lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6604(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6605
6606** Changes in Ediff
6607
6608*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6609pops up the Info file for this command.
6610
6611*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6612the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6613merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6614directories).
6615
6616*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6617and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6618files in the same directory.
6619
6620*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6621The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6622related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6623
6624** Changes in Viper
6625
6626*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6627*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6628 instead of vip-.
6629*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6630*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6631Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6632*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6633*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6634*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6635color when Viper is in insert state.
6636*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6637Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6638viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6639
6640** Etags changes.
6641
6642*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6643default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6644Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6645variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6646not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6647
6648*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6649
6650*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6651constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6652
6653*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6654recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6655In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6656
6657*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6658C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6659recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6660methods and protocols.
6661
6662*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6663.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6664column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6665paragraph name.
6666
6667*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6668an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6669at least M times and as many as N times.
6670
6671** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6672in files has changed slightly.
6673
6674With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6675time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6676This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6677with old time-stamp-format values.
6678
6679In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6680(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6681This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6682reasons.
6683
6684In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6685natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6686fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6687(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6688time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6689specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6690
6691Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6692case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6693truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6694
6695The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6696being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6697future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6698recommended now will continue to work then.
6699
6700See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6701details.
6702
6703** There are some additional major modes:
6704
6705dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6706m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6707meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6708
6709** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6710copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6711into Emacs.
6712
6713** New Lisp packages include:
6714
6715*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6716
6717*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6718be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6719
6720*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6721
6722*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6723in shell buffers.
6724
6725*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6726See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6727and `elint-defun'.
6728
6729*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6730meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6731ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6732strings or comments.
6733
6734These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6735abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6736you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6737insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6738at these points.
6739
6740*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6741can visit them by short forms of their names.
6742
6743*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6744Emacs Lisp function at point.
6745
6746*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6747
6748*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6749switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6750
6751*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6752
6753*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6754
6755*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6756
6757*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6758from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6759
6760*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6761You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6762inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6763original place after inserting the copy.
6764
6765*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6766on the buffer.
6767
6768You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6769velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6770(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6771
6772Enable mouse-drag with:
6773 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6774-or-
6775 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6776
6777*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6778mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6779
6780*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6781It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6782
6783*** ogonek
6784
6785The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6786Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6787platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6788TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6789ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6790prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6791instance) and vice versa.
6792
6793To use this package load it using
6794 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6795Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6796 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6797 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6798The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6799ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6800
6801*** Interface to ph.
6802
6803Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6804
6805The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6806services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6807these servers.
6808
6809*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6810
6811*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6812You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6813while the real cursor does not move.
6814
6815*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6816for visiting your favorite web sites.
6817
6818*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6819so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6820
6821** movemail change
6822
6823Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6824mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6825supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6826user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6827
6828This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6829
6830* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6831
6832** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6833
6834Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6835end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6836Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6837file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6838file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6839
6840To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6841C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6842coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6843specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6844LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6845save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6846
6847* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6848
6849** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6850Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6851vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6852Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6853
6854** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6855to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6856
6857In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6858don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6859"win".
6860
6861** Basic Lisp changes
6862
6863*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6864evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6865
6866*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6867be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6868or by the user.
6869
6870The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6871
6872*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6873
6874(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6875(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6876
6877*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6878usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6879its argument.
6880
6881*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6882
6883*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6884
6885*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6886
6887*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6888error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6889include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6890`format' function.
6891
6892*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6893or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6894whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6895
6896*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6897either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6898adding one of these suffixes.
6899
6900*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6901which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6902If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6903
6904We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6905because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6906
6907*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6908
6909*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6910You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6911
6912*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6913conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6914
6915 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6916
6917BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6918BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6919
6920*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6921choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6922restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6923works using `save-current-buffer'.
6924
6925*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6926write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6927of the last form.
6928
6929*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6930which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6931last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6932as the last form.
6933
6934*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6935characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6936matches.
6937
6938For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6939
6940*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6941with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6942Then it returns that string.
6943
6944For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6945
6946(with-output-to-string
6947 (princ "The buffer is ")
6948 (princ (buffer-name)))
6949
6950returns "The buffer is foo".
6951
6952** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6953is non-nil.
6954
6955These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6956buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6957characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6958
6959*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6960a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6961
6962Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6963character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6964Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6965position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6966characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6967 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6968
6969ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6970Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6971non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6972characters".
6973
6974The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6975through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6976"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6977range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6978leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6979
6980*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6981(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6982multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6983character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6984
6985This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6986always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6987
6988However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6989
6990*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6991because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6992have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6993the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6994guaranteed.
6995
6996*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6997between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6998character).
6999
7000When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7001
7002 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7003 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7004 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7005 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7006 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7007
7008*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7009
7010*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7011`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7012more than the number of characters.
7013
7014You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7015it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7016\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7017is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7018follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7019newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7020
7021*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7022and returns a string containing those characters.
7023
7024*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7025(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7026counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7027character, sref signals an error.
7028
7029*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7030in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7031string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7032
7033*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7034in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7035region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7036
7037*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7038the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7039to a vector of the characters in it.
7040
7041*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7042of a string. You call it as follows:
7043
7044 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7045
7046This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7047STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7048This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7049Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7050it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7051
7052*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7053if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7054
7055*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7056if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7057
7058*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7059to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7060not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7061which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7062
7063(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7064
7065This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7066
7067The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7068If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7069are not included in the resulting value.
7070
7071The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7072at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7073WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7074is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7075
7076If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7077place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7078character extends across that column), then the padding character
7079PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7080string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7081column START-COLUMN.
7082
7083*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7084the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7085necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7086difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7087changed text, before the change.
7088
7089*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7090sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7091one character set for each script, not for each language.
7092
7093**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7094
7095**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7096
7097**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7098set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7099
7100**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7101name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7102which identify the character within that character set.
7103
7104**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7105byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7106opposite of split-char.
7107
7108**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7109of all the characters between BEG and END.
7110
7111**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7112of all the characters in a string.
7113
7114*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7115and specifying coding systems.
7116
7117**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7118system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7119of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7120(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7121and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7122as what to do about code conversion.)
7123
7124**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7125name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7126
7127**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7128for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7129except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7130
7131Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7132which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7133to match against a file name.
7134
7135VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7136a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7137decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7138to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7139systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7140specifies the coding system for encoding.
7141
7142If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7143or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7144
7145**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7146the coding system to use for network sockets.
7147
7148Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7149which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7150either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7151service names.
7152
7153VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7154a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7155decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7156to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7157systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7158specifies the coding system for encoding.
7159
7160If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7161or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7162
7163**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7164for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7165except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7166start the subprocess.
7167
7168**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7169systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7170when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7171(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7172to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7173
7174**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7175coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7176subprocess.
7177
7178It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7179but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7180start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7181connection permanently or until overridden.
7182
7183The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7184file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7185network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7186coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7187It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7188system for one operation at a time.
7189
7190**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7191files, subprocesses or network connections.
7192
7193**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7194coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7195The value is a cons cell,
7196 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7197where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7198the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7199input to the subprocess.
7200
7201**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7202change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7203
7204** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7205customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7206you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7207
7208You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7209variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7210information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7211legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7212customization.
7213
7214Thus, instead of writing
7215
7216 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7217 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7218
7219you would now write this:
7220
7221 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7222 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7223 :type 'boolean
7224 :group foo)
7225
7226The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7227two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7228describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7229for a description of them.
7230
7231The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7232should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7233
7234 (defgroup ispell nil
7235 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7236 :group 'processes)
7237
7238The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7239group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7240but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7241to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7242second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7243
7244Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7245package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7246have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7247package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7248first-level subgroups.
7249
7250** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7251
7252This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7253separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7254
7255** easy-mmode
7256
7257The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7258developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7259only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7260predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7261`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7262`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7263
7264** Text property changes
7265
7266*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7267text property.
7268
7269*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7270previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7271place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7272functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7273starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7274
7275If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7276LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7277of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7278position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7279
7280*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7281value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7282is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7283
7284** Changes in invisibility features
7285
7286*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7287hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7288is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7289should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7290would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7291make the overlay visible.
7292
7293During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7294invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7295needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7296which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7297the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7298t when it should hide it.
7299
7300*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7301
7302Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7303invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7304and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7305Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7306manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7307Here is an example of how to do this:
7308
7309 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7310 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7311 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7312 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7313
7314 ...
7315 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7316
7317 ...
7318 ;; When done with the overlays:
7319 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7320 ;; Or respectively:
7321 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7322
7323** Changes in syntax parsing.
7324
7325*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7326`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7327obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7328`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7329
7330If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7331is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7332used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7333
7334When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7335character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7336
7337 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7338 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7339
7340 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7341 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7342 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7343
7344 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7345 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7346 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7347 determine the syntax type of the character.
7348
7349 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7350 of the current buffer.
7351
7352*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7353value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7354for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7355
7356*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7357and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7358only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7359character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7360another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7361
7362These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7363text property.
7364
7365*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7366arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7367of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7368
7369*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7370(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7371element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7372nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7373string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7374
7375*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7376syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7377`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7378
7379** Changes in face features
7380
7381*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7382if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7383
7384*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7385of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7386
7387*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7388set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7389
7390*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7391set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7392
7393*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7394by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7395and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7396the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7397overlay property).
7398
7399This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7400arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7401
7402** Changes in file-handling functions
7403
7404*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7405directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7406they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7407is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7408
7409This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7410begins with ~.
7411
7412*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7413it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7414
7415*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7416the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7417
7418*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7419as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7420
7421*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7422character code conversion as well as other things.
7423
7424Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7425(formerly it did not).
7426
7427*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7428environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7429
7430*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7431instead of constant strings.
7432
7433*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7434to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7435any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7436
7437substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7438in the same way as before.
7439
7440*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7441The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7442which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7443
7444*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7445error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7446else, and returns nil.
7447
7448*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7449directory cannot be listed.
7450
7451** Changes in minibuffer input
7452
7453*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7454read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7455additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7456argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7457ways:
7458
7459 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7460 It is available through the history command M-n.
7461
7462*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7463read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7464argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7465minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7466enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7467
7468In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7469argument in this way.
7470
7471*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7472from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7473minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7474
7475** Echo area features
7476
7477*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7478echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7479minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7480after the echo area is cleared.
7481
7482*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7483in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7484
7485** Keyboard input features
7486
7487*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7488set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7489
7490*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7491received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7492by keyboard macros.
7493
7494** Frame-related changes
7495
7496*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7497creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7498hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7499
7500*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7501the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7502has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7503
7504*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7505selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7506value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7507in the selected frame.
7508
7509*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7510is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7511which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7512
7513** X Windows features
7514
7515*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7516x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7517x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7518
7519*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7520The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7521
7522*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7523MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7524A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7525
7526If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7527it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7528
7529** Subprocess features
7530
7531*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7532functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7533automatically.
7534
7535*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7536and returns the output from the command as a string.
7537
7538*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7539and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7540
7541** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7542does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7543
7544** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7545at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7546goes after the other menu items.
7547
7548** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7549of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7550around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7551are in use.
7552
7553The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7554series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7555
7556Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7557after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7558form.
7559
7560** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7561is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7562but its hook is still run.
7563
7564** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7565for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7566
7567If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7568regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7569useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7570
7571This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7572are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7573filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7574warned.
7575
7576** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7577way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7578
7579** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7580integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7581functions like display-time.
7582
7583** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7584name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7585
7586** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7587can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7588is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7589
7590** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7591if there is an error in compilation.
7592
7593** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7594switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7595argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7596they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7597
7598** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7599Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7600the *scratch* buffer.
7601
7602** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7603The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7604where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7605e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7606
7607** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7608and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7609It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7610
7611** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7612using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7613variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7614and compose-mail-other-frame.
7615
7616** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7617can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7618full name of the specified user will be returned.
7619
7620** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7621of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7622where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7623in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7624option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7625files at all.
7626
7627** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7628and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7629width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7630the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7631
7632For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7633minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7634with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7635is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7636
7637** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7638
7639** imenu.el changes.
7640
7641You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7642item from menu created by imenu.
7643
7644An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7645#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7646select one of those items.
7647
7648* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7649
7650* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7651
7652** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7653mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7654
7655** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7656use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7657Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7658
7659* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7660
7661** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7662To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7663
7664** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7665conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7666matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7667expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7668word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7669all caps.
7670
7671** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7672at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7673
7674When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7675does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7676as in previous Emacs versions.
7677
7678** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7679non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7680time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7681frames.
7682
7683** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7684if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7685This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7686Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7687accident.
7688
7689** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7690keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7691It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7692line and then executing the macro.
7693
7694This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7695
7696** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7697(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7698characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7699characters.
7700
7701** Font Lock mode
7702
7703*** Font Lock support modes
7704
7705Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7706below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7707hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7708to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7709Font Lock mode is enabled.
7710
7711For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7712
7713 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7714
7715in your ~/.emacs.
7716
7717*** lazy-lock
7718
7719The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7720only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7721becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7722Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7723occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7724buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7725Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7726
7727To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7728
7729 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7730
7731To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7732
7733** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7734
7735*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7736paren and key.
7737
7738*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7739supported.
7740
7741** Gnus changes.
7742
7743Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7744commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7745significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7746previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7747
7748Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7749between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7750
7751*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7752variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7753obsolete.
7754
7755*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7756missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7757
7758 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7759
7760*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7761
7762 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7763
7764*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7765referred.
7766
7767*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7768
7769 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7770
7771*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7772
7773 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7774
7775*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7776buffers.
7777
7778 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7779
7780*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7781
7782 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7783
7784*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7785
7786 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7787
7788*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7789
7790 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7791
7792*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7793is possible.
7794
7795 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7796
7797*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7798groups of groups.
7799
7800*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7801
7802*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7803batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7804
7805*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7806
7807*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7808
7809*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7810
7811 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7812
7813*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7814expiration times.
7815
7816*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7817
7818*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7819process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7820
7821*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7822articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7823bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7824
7825*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7826articles with the `*' command.
7827
7828*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7829
7830*** Article headers can be buttonized.
7831
7832 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7833
7834*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7835
7836*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7837`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7838
7839*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7840buffer.
7841
7842*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7843
7844*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7845
7846*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7847
7848 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7849
7850*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7851
7852 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7853
7854*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7855
7856*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7857
7858*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7859
7860 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7861 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7862
7863*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7864refetching.
7865
7866 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7867
7868*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7869buffer to allow easier treatment.
7870
7871*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7872
7873*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7874
7875 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7876
7877*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7878articles.
7879
7880 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7881
7882*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7883
7884*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7885cited text to hide is now customizable.
7886
7887 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7888
7889*** Boring headers can be hidden.
7890
7891 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7892
7893*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7894
7895*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7896
7897The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7898in greater detail.
7899
7900* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7901
7902** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7903second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7904asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7905exists.
7906
7907** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7908as well as lists.
7909
7910** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7911of a given keymap.
7912
7913** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7914given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7915keymap or nil.
7916
7917** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7918an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7919name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7920menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7921equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7922alias.
7923
7924* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7925
7926** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7927
7928Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7929This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7930was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7931far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7932pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7933
7934For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7935you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7936`http://www.vtw.org/'.
7937
7938** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7939
7940The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7941do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7942It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7943much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7944chapter of the manual for details.
7945
7946However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7947customization variables take effect.
7948
7949** Marking with the mouse.
7950
7951When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7952highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7953using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7954
7955** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7956
7957*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7958
7959*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7960to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7961
7962*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7963in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7964you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7965application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7966applications, these problems are significant.
7967
7968If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7969likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7970However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7971will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7972other DOS application as a subprocess.
7973
7974Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7975You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7976
7977If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7978subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7979have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7980Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7981separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7982Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7983
7984** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7985
7986This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7987which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7988minibuffer contains.
7989
7990** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7991
7992The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7993It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7994It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7995affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7996
7997The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7998it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7999and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8000when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8001
8002** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8003enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8004
8005** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8006F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8007Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8008
8009If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8010menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8011something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8012the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8013
8014 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8015
8016** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8017to replace the characters it "deletes".
8018
8019** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8020
8021** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8022a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8023select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8024It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8025immediately after the selected one.
8026
8027This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8028made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8029
8030** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8031
8032Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8033directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8034If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8035Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8036recover-session.
8037
8038You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8039auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8040will not work.
8041
8042Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8043normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8044this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8045bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8046now that the bug is fixed.
8047
8048** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8049
8050There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8051when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8052Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8053which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8054
8055If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8056telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8057VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8058the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8059
8060** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8061Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8062is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8063
8064There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8065Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8066enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8067The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8068remain normal.
8069
8070** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8071header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8072
8073Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8074known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8075offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8076Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8077
8078Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8079of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8080a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8081name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8082documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8083`mail-directory-stream'.)
8084
8085** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8086skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8087characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8088with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8089
8090Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8091- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8092wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8093
8094The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8095less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8096headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8097Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8098Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8099fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8100to a limitation in font-lock).
8101
8102External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8103
8104** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8105buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8106buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8107this example:
8108
8109 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8110 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8111
8112** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8113
8114*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8115
8116*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8117
8118*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8119
8120*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8121entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8122will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8123isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8124(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8125The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8126
8127*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8128does the same job.
8129
8130*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8131"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8132
8133*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8134text.
8135
8136** Font Lock mode
8137
8138*** Global Font Lock mode
8139
8140Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8141new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8142font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8143turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8144on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8145
8146For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8147
8148 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8149
8150in your ~/.emacs.
8151
8152*** Local Refontification
8153
8154In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8155However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8156those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8157command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8158
8159In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8160(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8161current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8162above and below point.
8163
8164With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8165
8166** Follow mode
8167
8168Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8169buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8170side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8171they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8172split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8173follow-mode.
8174
8175M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8176
8177To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8178command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8179
8180** hide-show changes.
8181
8182The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8183to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8184normal hooks.
8185
8186** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8187The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8188
8189** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8190recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8191those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8192
8193** MSDOS Changes
8194
8195*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8196Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8197
8198*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8199and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8200
8201*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8202
8203*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8204pressing both mouse buttons.
8205
8206*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8207restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8208are:
8209
8210**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8211now works.
8212
8213**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8214
8215**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8216implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8217
8218**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8219
8220**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8221
8222**** `M-x recover-session' works.
8223
8224**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8225
8226**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8227
8228* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8229
8230** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8231tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8232remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8233this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8234behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8235
8236** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8237
8238The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8239not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8240need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8241be different.
8242
8243It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8244than `system-type'.
8245
8246See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8247
8248** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8249now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8250
8251** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8252that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8253
8254** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8255no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8256reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8257
8258The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8259to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8260like this:
8261
8262 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8263
8264SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8265It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8266becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8267
8268REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8269seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8270means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8271
8272*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8273up if too much time passes.
8274
8275 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8276
8277This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8278If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8279of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8280form in BODY.
8281
8282*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8283a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8284call looks like this:
8285
8286 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8287
8288SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8289runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8290timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8291ARGS.
8292
8293Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8294command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8295command.
8296
8297REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8298time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8299does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8300each time Emacs becomes idle.
8301
8302If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8303idle for SECS seconds.
8304
8305*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8306all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8307programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8308instead.
8309
8310*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8311there is no answer within a certain time.
8312
8313 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8314
8315asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8316within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8317Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8318
8319** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8320arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8321meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8322arguments in between are ignored.
8323
8324This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8325the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8326
8327** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8328/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8329/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8330site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8331version.
8332
8333It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8334version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8335for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8336has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8337and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8338problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8339
8340** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8341.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8342systems with limited file name syntax.
8343
8344Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8345convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8346for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8347completions.el:
8348
8349(defvar save-completions-file-name
8350 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8351 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8352
8353This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8354depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8355convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8356Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8357MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8358
8359** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8360rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8361minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8362
8363** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8364marker from its buffer position.
8365
8366** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8367Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8368The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8369
8370** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8371that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8372condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8373of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8374matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8375regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8376
8377This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8378errors that happen often during editing.
8379
8380** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8381into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8382puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8383
8384** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8385now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8386
8387** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8388a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8389name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8390to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8391and not get-buffer-window.
8392
8393** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8394calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8395being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8396
8397If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8398buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8399property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8400non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8401are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8402property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8403over and over for the same text.
8404
8405** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8406
8407*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8408in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8409
8410;; @(#) HEADER: text
8411;; $HEADER: text $
8412
8413in addition to the normal
8414
8415;; HEADER: text
8416
8417*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8418checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8419lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8420 3444
8421* For older news, see the file ONEWS. 3445* For older news, see the file NEWS.1.
8422 3446
8423---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3447----------------------------------------------------------------------
8424Copyright information: 3448Copyright information:
diff --git a/etc/NEWS.1 b/etc/NEWS.1
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..0cb7daf09d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/etc/NEWS.1
@@ -0,0 +1,5006 @@
1GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3See the end for copying conditions.
4
5Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8^L
9* Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
10
11** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
12input.
13
14** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
15
16** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
17
18** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
19only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
20exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
21(e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
22(e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
23
24** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
25been added.
26
27^L
28* Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
29
30** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
31
32^L
33* Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
34
35** Not new, but not mentioned before:
36M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
37
38* Changes in Emacs 20.4
39
40** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
41
42You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
43Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
44`.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
45
46If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
47is the one that is used.
48
49** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
50the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
51Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
52separate from the command's regular output.
53Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
54says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
55In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
56the buffer name.
57
58When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
59output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
60it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
61cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
62
63** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
64the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
65is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
66created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
67
68** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
69example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
70match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
71quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
72
73** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
74now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
75if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
76they never ignore case.
77
78** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
79under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
80applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
81of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
82just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
83convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
84part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
85
86If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
87the same format that was used in the file before.
88
89You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
90`inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
91
92** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
93renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
94This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
95
96** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
97The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
98buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
99your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
100is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
101end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
102Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
103
104The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
105eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
106control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
107format. You can now customize these variables.
108
109** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
110filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
111filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
112enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
113
114** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
115in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
116windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
117
118** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
119dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
120doesn't have any effect.
121
122** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
123not one per buffer.
124
125** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
126use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
127 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
128
129** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
130To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
131`auto-show-mode' command.
132
133** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
134avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
135versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
136choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
137occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
138
139** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
140cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
141
142** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
143character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
144feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
145
146** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
147the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
148interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
149and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
150
151** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
152
153The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
154that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
155one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
156codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
157set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
158
159Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
160from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
161
162IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
163equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
164a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
165`?' on other systems.
166
167IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
168feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
169Unix.
170
171Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
172current codepage when it starts.
173
174** Mail changes
175
176*** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
177`mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
178appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
179non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
180MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
181headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
182latin-1:
183
184 MIME-version: 1.0
185 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
186 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
187
188*** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
189default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
190default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
191sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
192buffer-file-coding-system.
193
194You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
195sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
196mail.
197
198*** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
199if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
200Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
201list of possible coding systems.
202
203** CC Mode changes
204
205*** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
206modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
207longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
208docstring for details.
209
210*** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
211symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
212found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
213prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
214lineup functions use this feature currently.
215
216*** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
217"finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
218
219*** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
220"catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
221
222*** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
223from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
224symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
225c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
226anonymous classes.
227
228*** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
229syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
230
231*** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
232inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
233support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
234function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
235
236*** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
237(i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
238brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
239c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
240(brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
241
242*** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
243
244*** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
245
246*** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
247for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
248
249*** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
250
251*** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
252associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
253This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
254circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
255class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
256
257** Gnus changes.
258
259*** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
260added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
261Gnus manual for the full story.
262
263*** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
264before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
265group, which is created automatically.
266
267*** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
268values.
269
270*** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
271
272*** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
273outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
274
275*** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
276`C-u C-c C-c'.
277
278*** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
279
280*** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
281re-highlighting of the article buffer.
282
283*** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
284
285*** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
286Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
287
288*** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
289`a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
290
291*** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
292control over simplification.
293
294*** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
295
296*** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
297limit.
298
299*** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
300
301*** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
302
303*** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
304If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
305rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
306
307*** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
308`a' forces normal posting method.
309
310*** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
311-- `W d'.
312
313*** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
314to a non-nil value.
315
316*** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
317where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
318
319*** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
320has been added.
321
322*** A history of where mails have been split is available.
323
324*** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
325
326*** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
327`gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
328
329*** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
330`message-cite-original-without-signature'.
331
332*** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
333
334*** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
335been added.
336
337*** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
338`gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
339
340*** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
341updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
342
343*** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
344
345*** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
346
347*** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
348
349** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
350
351*** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
352options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
353nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
354
355*** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
356TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
357of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
358TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
359can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
360
361*** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
362All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
363but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
364the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
365
366*** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
367the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
368buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
369mismatch.
370
371** Changes to RefTeX mode
372
373*** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
374file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
375
376*** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
377lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
378characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
379removed from the label.
380
381*** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
382a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
383
384*** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
385customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
386
387*** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
388`reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
389expressions.
390
391*** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
392
393** New/deleted modes and packages
394
395*** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
396SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
397
398*** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
399editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
400SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
401
402*** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
403changes with a special face.
404
405*** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
406this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
407Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
408
409* MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
410
411** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
412This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
413conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
414and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
415check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
416
417The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
418Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
419distribution when the config.bat script is run.
420
421** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
422MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
423controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
424directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
425Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
426on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
427string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
428program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
429printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
430
431** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
432output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
433available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
434input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
435temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
436program.
437
438An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
439and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
440programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
441automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
442as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
443ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
444
445** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
446a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
447MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
448was not documented clearly before.
449
450** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
451This includes Tetris and Snake.
452
453* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
454
455** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
456return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
457They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
458meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
459
460** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
461WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
462and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
463
464** Changes in the file-attributes function.
465
466*** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
467It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
468
469*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
470the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
471integers.
472
473** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
474files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
475arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
476file names and attributes are returned.
477
478** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
479sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
480accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
481It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
482returns the result.
483
484** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
485to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
486
487** New functions for base64 conversion:
488
489The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
490into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
491performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
492optionally.
493
494Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
495job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
496
497**
498The new function process-running-child-p
499will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
500terminal to its own child process.
501
502** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
503when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
504to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
505itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
506
507** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
508be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
509
510** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
511:included is an alias for :visible.
512
513easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
514easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
515to move or copy menu entries.
516
517** Multibyte editing changes
518
519*** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
520an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
521make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
522work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
523char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
524 (setq char (sref str idx)
525 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
526The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
527
528If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
529(say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
530 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
531
532*** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
533region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
534deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
535
536 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
537
538This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
539across the boundary.
540
541*** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
542`unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
543 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
544 contains 8-bit characters.
545 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
546 contains invalid characters.
547
548*** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
549text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
550preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
551text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
552way.
553
554*** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
555If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
556end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
557prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
558
559*** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
560compose Thai characters in a string.
561
562** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
563argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
564for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
565menus should always use the third argument.
566
567** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
568read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
569arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
570input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
571
572** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
573of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
574programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
575inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
576
577** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
578the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
579returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
580echo area contents.
581
582 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
583
584** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
585NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
586requested feature cannot be loaded.
587
588** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
589foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
590means to clear out that attribute.
591
592** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
593gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
594
595** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
596read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
597unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
598end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
599
600** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
601the gap of the current buffer.
602
603** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
604to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
605current buffer.
606
607** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
608facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
609These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
610it back in after any modifications have been made.
611
612* Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
613
614** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
615the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
616/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
617directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
618subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
619
620Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
621names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
622Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
623which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
624these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
625
626Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
627starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
628time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
629
630This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
631Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
632to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
633subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
634`.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
635results.
636
637** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
638GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
639that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
640fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
641
642* Changes in Emacs 20.3
643
644** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
645including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
646it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
647perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
648
649** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
650specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
651region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
652further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
653command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
654within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
655are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
656region.
657
658In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
659selective undo.
660
661** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
662unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
663buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
664effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
665Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
666
667The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
668though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
669-*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
670load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
671
672** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
673no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
674enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
675something that most users not do.
676
677** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
678operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
679The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
680applications.
681
682C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
683pasting operations.
684
685** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
686setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
687like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
688printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
689`ps-printer-name'.
690
691** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
692minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
693any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
694except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
695incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
696hits a new word.
697
698Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
699Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
700to be confused by TeX commands.
701
702You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
703correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
704clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
705of various alternative replacements and actions.
706
707Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
708the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
709corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
710alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
711flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
712
713Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
714flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
715
716** Changes in input method usage.
717
718Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
719the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
720respectively.
721
722You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
723
724If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
725of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
726
727The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
728that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
729
730 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
731
732 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
733
734 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
735 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
736
737 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
738 given in the following case:
739 o When you are using a complex input method.
740 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
741
742If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
743input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
744and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
745setting it to t is helpful.
746
747The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
748
749In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
750keys:
751 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
752 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
753 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
754These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
755environment.
756
757** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
758names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
759minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
760get
761
762 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
763
764which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
765
766Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
767Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
768
769** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
770at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
771its owner and group.
772
773** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
774Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
775
776** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
777contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
778
779** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
780which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
781in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
782by the left edge of the rectangle.
783
784** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
785increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
786C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
787for writing keyboard macros.
788
789** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
790files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
791frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
792the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
793additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
794info.
795
796** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
797
798** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
799query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
800contents only.
801
802** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
803confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
804the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
805says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
806
807** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
808non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
809literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
810
811** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
812now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
813Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
814inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
815
816** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
817failure if the command produces no output.
818
819** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
820manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
821the mouse.
822
823** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
824mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
825function and variable names.
826
827** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
828reading specific files. This has higher priority than
829file-coding-system-alist.
830
831** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
832t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
833converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
834the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
835according to the current fontset.
836
837** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
838
839The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
840that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
841nonascii-insert-offset.
842
843For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
844enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
845nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
846characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
847
848** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
849an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
850
851** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
852letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
853
854** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
855are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
856command keys.
857
858** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
859user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
860
861Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
862user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
863all variables that have documentation.
864
865** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
866shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
867that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
868minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
869it should show; the default is 20.
870
871Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
872the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
873of your input.
874
875** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
876all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
877recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
878argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
879the customizable options which were changed since that version.
880Newly added options are included as well.
881
882If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
883then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
884for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
885
886This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
887Customize menu.
888
889** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
890the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
891
892** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
893buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
894invoked.
895
896** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
897that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
898The default is 1.
899
900** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
901syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
902new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
903(C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
904sensibly.
905
906** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
907
908** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
909value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
910two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
911
912** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
913reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
914for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
915every night.
916
917** Desktop changes
918
919*** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
920the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
921
922*** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
923and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
924
925** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
926read and post multi-lingual articles.
927
928** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
929doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
930be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
931outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
932the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
933made invisible again.
934
935** Mail reading and sending changes
936
937*** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
938the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
939changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
940toggle.
941
942*** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
943now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
944summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
945the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
946rmail-default-body-file.
947
948*** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
949longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
950handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
951
952*** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
953it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
954is evaluated to insert the signature.
955
956*** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
957outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
958handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
959putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
960transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
961especially interested in trying feedmail.
962
963feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
964feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
965provided by feedmail are:
966
967**** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
968stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
969there is also a queue for draft messages
970
971**** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
972be prompted for confirmation
973
974**** does smart filling of address headers
975
976**** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
977the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
978can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
979
980**** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
981the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
982/usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
983function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
984
985** Dired changes
986
987*** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
988files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
989
990*** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
991run Dired on the directory name at point.
992
993*** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
994files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
995for a specified regexp.
996
997** VC Changes
998
999*** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
1000conveniently.
1001
1002*** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
1003faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
1004Dired.
1005
1006VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
1007directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
1008listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
1009currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
1010
1011You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
1012then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
1013vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
1014control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
1015on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
1016
1017All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
1018is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
1019`v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
1020the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
1021`vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
1022
1023The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
1024toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
1025VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
1026`* l', to mark all files currently locked.
1027
1028Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
1029ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
1030command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
1031
1032*** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
1033file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
1034session to resolve them.
1035
1036Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
1037resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
1038contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
1039uses as well).
1040
1041*** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
1042command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
1043you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
1044either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
1045branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
1046If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
1047using ediff.
1048
1049** Changes in Font Lock
1050
1051*** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
1052are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
1053use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
1054unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
1055compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
1056
1057** Frame name display changes
1058
1059*** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
1060frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
1061raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
1062when many frames are invisible or iconified.
1063
1064*** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
1065frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
1066menu.
1067
1068** Comint (subshell) changes
1069
1070*** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
1071subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
1072with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
1073
1074*** There are new commands in Comint mode.
1075
1076C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
1077that is, the line after the last line you got.
1078You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
1079
1080C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
1081send the current line together with the following line, when you send
1082the following line.
1083
1084C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
1085which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
1086previously sent input.
1087
1088C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
1089it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
1090as the search string.
1091
1092*** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
1093automatically in compilation-mode windows.
1094
1095** C mode changes
1096
1097*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
1098and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
1099assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
1100definition.
1101
1102*** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
1103(i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
1104Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
1105style is still the default however.
1106
1107*** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
1108
1109*** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
1110are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
1111them. They do not have key bindings by default.
1112
1113*** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
1114and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
1115
1116*** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
1117namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
1118
1119*** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
1120makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
1121
1122*** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
1123c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
1124
1125*** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
1126should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
1127package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
1128variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
1129
1130** Changes to hippie-expand.
1131
1132*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
1133non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
1134which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
1135
1136*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
1137non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
1138expanding dynamically.
1139
1140*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
1141non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
1142
1143*** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
1144non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
1145this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
1146expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
1147
1148*** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
1149
1150** Changes in BibTeX mode.
1151
1152*** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
1153bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
1154automatic key generation. This replaces variable
1155bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
1156against the first word in the title.
1157
1158*** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
1159capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
1160bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
1161lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
1162lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
1163bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
1164
1165*** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
1166generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
1167replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
1168bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
1169
1170** Changes in vcursor.el.
1171
1172*** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
1173and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
1174variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
1175entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
1176`vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
1177in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
1178
1179*** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
1180Editing group once the package is loaded.
1181
1182*** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
1183generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
1184vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
1185
1186*** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
1187vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
1188
1189** Ispell changes.
1190
1191*** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
1192buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
1193are identified by syntax tables in effect.
1194
1195*** Generic region skipping implemented.
1196A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
1197and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
1198defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
1199include:
1200
1201 o URLs are automatically skipped
1202 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
1203
1204*** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
1205
1206** Changes to RefTeX mode
1207
1208RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
1209large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
1210re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
1211section `Optimizations' in the manual.
1212
1213*** New recursive parser.
1214
1215The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
1216entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
1217recursive parser scans the individual files.
1218
1219*** Parsing only part of a document.
1220
1221Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
1222partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
1223the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
1224
1225 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
1226
1227*** Storing parsing information in a file.
1228
1229This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
1230
1231 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
1232
1233*** Using multiple selection buffers
1234
1235If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
1236for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
1237
1238 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
1239
1240*** References to external documents.
1241
1242The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
1243documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
1244documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
1245macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
1246RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
1247the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
1248The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
1249
1250*** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
1251
1252The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
1253and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
1254
1255Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
1256the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
1257
1258*** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
1259
1260The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
1261buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
1262
1263*** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
1264
1265The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
1266contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
1267`reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
1268have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
1269enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
1270at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
1271more.
1272
1273*** Support for the varioref package
1274
1275The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
1276
1277*** New hooks
1278
1279Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
1280and citations are created. These hooks are
1281`reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
1282`reftex-format-cite-function'.
1283
1284*** Citations outside LaTeX
1285
1286The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
1287a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
1288
1289*** Short context is no longer fontified.
1290
1291The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
1292fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
1293fontified, use
1294
1295 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
1296
1297** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
1298With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
1299the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
1300directories that contain the same file name.
1301
1302Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
1303Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
1304file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
1305Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
1306have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
1307names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
1308directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
1309directory.
1310
1311** New modes and packages
1312
1313*** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
1314It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
1315it, but some do not.
1316
1317*** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
1318code.
1319
1320*** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
1321current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
1322around in a buffer.
1323
1324Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
1325
1326*** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
1327uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
1328be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
1329established system of notation similar to Chess.
1330
1331*** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
1332documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
1333guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
1334
1335*** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
1336available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
1337system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
1338simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
1339functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
1340the like.
1341
1342*** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
1343identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
1344
1345*** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
1346within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
1347used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
1348the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
1349
1350*** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
1351
1352 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
1353 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
1354 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
1355 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
1356 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
1357 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
1358 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
1359 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
1360 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
1361 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
1362 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
1363
1364 Platform-specific modes:
1365
1366 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
1367 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
1368 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
1369 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
1370 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
1371 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
1372 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
1373 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
1374 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
1375
1376* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
1377
1378** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
1379use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
1380That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
1381Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
1382
1383Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
1384you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
1385consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
1386
1387** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
1388and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
1389specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
1390searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
1391
1392** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
1393multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
1394character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
1395environment.
1396
1397** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
1398take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
1399string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
1400current input method for reading this one event.
1401
1402** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
1403now control whether to output certain characters as
1404backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
1405non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
1406characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
1407in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
1408
1409* Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
1410
1411** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
1412of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
1413
1414** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
1415in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
1416always increases point by 1.
1417
1418The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
1419considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
1420
1421See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
1422
1423** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
1424Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
1425default value changed. For example,
1426
1427 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
1428 :type 'integer
1429 :group 'foo
1430 :version "20.3")
1431
1432 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
1433 :version "20.3")
1434
1435If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
1436default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
1437is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
1438`:version' in the top level group.
1439
1440This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
1441
1442** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
1443starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
1444
1445However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
1446symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
1447support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
1448to themselves.
1449
1450If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
1451this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
1452values whatever.
1453
1454** There is a new debugger command, R.
1455It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
1456in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
1457
1458** Frame-local variables.
1459
1460You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
1461the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
1462local bindings for that variable.
1463
1464These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
1465frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
1466modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
1467parameter name.
1468
1469Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
1470Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
1471active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
1472that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
1473
1474It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
1475clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
1476very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
1477through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
1478
1479** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
1480"symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
1481evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
1482makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
1483See the documentation in sregex.el.
1484
1485** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
1486is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
1487parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
1488The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
1489
1490** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
1491If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
1492
1493** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
1494known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
1495define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
1496
1497** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
1498when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
1499it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
1500history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
1501
1502The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
1503return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
1504empty input.
1505
1506** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
1507for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
1508`iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
1509Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
1510`read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
1511
1512** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
1513echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
1514a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
1515default password to use if the user enters nothing.
1516
1517** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
1518specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
1519function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
1520place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
1521non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
1522
1523** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
1524If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
1525up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
1526end of the window, even if this requires computation.
1527
1528** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
1529which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
1530If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
1531
1532** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
1533holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
1534was directed to display this buffer.
1535
1536** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
1537with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
1538describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
1539other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
1540set-window-configuration.
1541
1542** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
1543window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
1544positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
1545windows and the choice of buffers to display.
1546
1547** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
1548override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
1549look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
1550
1551If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
1552non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
1553map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
1554
1555minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
1556and it is meant to be set by major modes.
1557
1558** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
1559except that it discards all text properties from the result.
1560
1561** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
1562USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
1563floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
1564
1565** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
1566to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
1567in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
1568it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
1569
1570** Menu changes
1571
1572*** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
1573keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
1574better supported.
1575
1576The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
1577a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
1578you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
1579can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
1580then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
1581
1582*** A new format for menu items is supported.
1583
1584In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
1585 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
1586defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
1587starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
1588
1589The format is:
1590 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
1591 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
1592where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
1593string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
1594The supported properties include
1595
1596:enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
1597 item is enabled.
1598:visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
1599 item should appear in the menu.
1600:filter FILTER-FN
1601 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
1602 which will be REAL-BINDING.
1603 It should return a binding to use instead.
1604:keys DESCRIPTION
1605 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
1606 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
1607 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
1608:key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
1609 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
1610 keyboard binding.
1611:key-sequence nil
1612 This means that the command normally has no
1613 keyboard equivalent.
1614:help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
1615:button (TYPE . SELECTED)
1616 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
1617 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
1618 value says whether this button is currently selected.
1619
1620Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
1621Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
1622
1623(menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
1624
1625** New event types
1626
1627*** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
1628mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
1629corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
1630which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
1631
1632 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
1633
1634where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
1635same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
1636indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
1637negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
1638the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
1639forward, away from the user.
1640
1641As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
1642
1643*** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
1644files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
1645and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
1646filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
1647loaded into Emacs. The format is:
1648
1649 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
1650
1651where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
1652same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
1653that were dragged and dropped.
1654
1655As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
1656
1657** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
1658
1659*** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
1660any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
1661to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
1662
1663*** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
1664can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
1665that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
1666
1667*** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
1668in Emacs 19 and before.
1669
1670The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
1671The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
1672
1673*** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
1674buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
1675unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
1676representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
1677
1678This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
1679as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
1680viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
1681one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
1682will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
1683
1684This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
1685representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
1686(including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
1687consistent with the new representation.
1688
1689*** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
1690representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
1691about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
1692however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
1693
1694The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
1695nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
1696using the table nonascii-translation-table.
1697
1698*** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
1699representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
1700representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
1701
1702The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
1703loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
1704is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
1705
1706*** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
1707which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
1708
1709*** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
1710which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
1711
1712*** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
1713portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
1714so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
1715You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
1716
1717*** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
1718it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
1719
1720*** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
1721convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
1722buffer or string being searched.
1723
1724One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
1725[...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
1726searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
1727searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
1728obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
1729you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
1730expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
1731
1732*** Structure of coding system changed.
1733
1734All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
1735by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
1736which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
1737as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
1738vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
1739your own alias name of a coding system by the function
1740define-coding-system-alias.
1741
1742The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
1743the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
1744access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
1745pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
1746character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
1747safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
1748'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
1749`iso-8859-1'.
1750
1751Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
1752The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
1753coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
1754(coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
1755
1756Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
1757also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
1758are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
1759the other character sets and read it back correctly.
1760
1761*** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
1762proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
1763This function requires a user interaction.
1764
1765*** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
1766find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
1767select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
1768systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
1769a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
1770select-safe-coding-system.
1771
1772*** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
1773decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
1774last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
1775was done.
1776
1777*** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
1778used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
1779coding systems used by some specific language environment.
1780
1781*** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
1782return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
1783characters are found, they now return a list of single element
1784`undecided' or its subsidiaries.
1785
1786*** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
1787coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
1788coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
1789converted.
1790
1791*** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
1792coding system for communicating with other X clients.
1793
1794*** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
1795character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
1796character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
1797each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
1798either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
1799range of characters.
1800
1801*** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
1802Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
1803
1804*** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
1805in the current buffer at position POS.
1806
1807*** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
1808input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
1809function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
1810character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
1811event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
1812binding input-method-function to nil.
1813
1814The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
1815method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
1816input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
1817the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
1818not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
1819
1820The input method function is not called when reading the second and
1821subsequent events of a key sequence.
1822
1823*** You can customize any language environment by using
1824set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
1825
1826The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
1827customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
1828instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
1829environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
1830exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
1831
1832* Changes in Emacs 20.1
1833
1834** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
1835options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
1836at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
1837tree structure.
1838
1839M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
1840user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
1841
1842With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
1843session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
1844in your .emacs file.)
1845
1846** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
1847You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
1848
1849** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
1850This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
1851
1852** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
1853immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
1854kills the region.
1855
1856The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
1857delete the character before point, as usual.
1858
1859** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
1860on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
1861by setting search-highlight to nil.)
1862
1863** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
1864insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
1865the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
1866onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
1867history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
1868past.)
1869
1870** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
1871This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
1872in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
1873TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
1874makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
1875
1876As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
1877and is an alias for it.
1878
1879If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
1880use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
1881
1882** Scrolling changes
1883
1884*** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
1885position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
1886
1887In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
1888on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
1889where it started.
1890
1891*** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
1892move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
1893screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
1894does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
1895
1896*** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
1897top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
1898comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
1899recenters the window.
1900
1901** International character set support (MULE)
1902
1903Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
1904including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
1905Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
1906Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
1907features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
1908MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
1909
1910Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
1911coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
1912character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
1913variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
1914into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
1915
1916Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
1917generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
1918supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
1919language, to make it possible to type them.
1920
1921The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
1922character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
1923
1924The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
1925to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
1926
1927You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
1928
1929 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
1930
1931Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
1932characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
1933argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
1934already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
1935characters for their work until they want to change.
1936
1937*** Input methods
1938
1939An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
1940specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
1941has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
1942the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
1943support several input methods.
1944
1945The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
1946another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
1947work.
1948
1949A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
1950characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
1951composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
1952consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
1953sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
1954letter.
1955
1956The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
1957by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
1958First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
1959marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
1960mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
1961
1962None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
1963they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
1964phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
1965converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
1966
1967Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
1968word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
1969typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
1970the first guess is wrong.
1971
1972*** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
1973turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
1974
1975If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
1976byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
1977they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
1978the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
1979
1980However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
1981use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
1982includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
1983translate automatically to and from either one.
1984
1985*** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
1986
1987Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
1988file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
1989sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
1990what you want.
1991
1992If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
1993example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
1994system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
1995multibyte characters in that buffer.
1996
1997If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
1998character conversion as well.
1999
2000*** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
2001
2002A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
2003Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
2004requires using many fonts.
2005
2006Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
2007collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
2008
2009A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
2010the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
2011have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
2012you would use a font.
2013
2014If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
2015specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
2016display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
2017
2018The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
2019(that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
2020characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
2021or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
2022and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
2023
2024*** Defining fontsets.
2025
2026Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
2027chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
2028with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
2029
2030Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
2031of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
2032`fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
2033standard fontset are created automatically.
2034
2035If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
2036argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
2037FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
2038with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
2039name is `fontset-startup'.
2040
2041Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
2042The resource value should have this form:
2043 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
2044FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
2045 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
2046 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
2047 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
2048The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
2049of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
2050CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
2051FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
2052
2053Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
2054last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
2055You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
2056
2057For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
2058font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
2059following resource,
2060 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
2061the font for ASCII is generated as below:
2062 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
2063Here is the substitution rule:
2064 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
2065 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
2066 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
2067 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
2068 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
2069
2070The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
2071fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
2072that function explicitly to create a fontset.
2073
2074With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
2075like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
2076name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
2077fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
2078fontsets.
2079
2080*** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
2081defaults for a particular choice of language.
2082
2083Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
2084method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
2085visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
2086already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
2087language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
2088system for new files that you create.
2089
2090It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
2091set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
2092whole Emacs session.
2093
2094For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
2095chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
2096with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
2097
2098*** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
2099specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
2100specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
2101the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
2102coding systems that Emacs supports.
2103
2104*** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
2105lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
2106This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
2107After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
2108is used for *the immediately following command*.
2109
2110So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
2111write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
2112
2113If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
2114then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
2115
2116For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
2117visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
2118
2119*** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
2120construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
2121to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
2122specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
2123of the file.
2124
2125*** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
2126the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
2127code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
2128translated into that character code.
2129
2130This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
2131various countries to support the languages of those countries.
2132
2133By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
2134
2135*** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
2136the coding system for keyboard input.
2137
2138Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
2139with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
2140some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
2141
2142By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
2143
2144Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
2145input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
2146translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
2147to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
2148designed to work with terminals.
2149
2150*** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
2151specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
2152This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
2153has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
2154translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
2155in the corresponding buffer.
2156
2157By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
2158
2159*** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
2160to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
2161It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
2162
2163*** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
2164an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
2165command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
2166want to use.
2167
2168C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
2169method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
2170
2171*** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
2172layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
2173remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
2174which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
2175
2176*** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
2177the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
2178related information.
2179
2180*** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
2181HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
2182scripts.
2183
2184*** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
2185information about the support for a particular language.
2186You specify the language as an argument.
2187
2188*** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
2189the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
2190first dash.
2191
2192A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
2193(except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
2194whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
21951 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
2196
2197 A alternativnyj (Russian)
2198 B big5 (Chinese)
2199 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
2200 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
2201 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
2202 E euc-japan (Japanese)
2203 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
2204 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
2205 K euc-korea (Korean)
2206 R koi8 (Russian)
2207 Q tibetan
2208 S shift_jis (Japanese)
2209 T lao
2210 T tis620 (Thai)
2211 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
2212 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
2213 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
2214 v viqr (Vietnamese)
2215 z hz (Chinese)
2216
2217When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
2218two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
2219coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
2220keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
2221
2222*** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
2223conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
2224
2225When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
2226into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
2227rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
2228Rmail files themselves.
2229
2230*** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
2231conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
2232
2233Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
2234for sending mail:
2235
2236- If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
2237- Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
2238- Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
2239 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
2240- Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
2241
2242*** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
2243to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
2244Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
2245translations.
2246
2247** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
2248of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
2249insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
2250without any conversion.
2251
2252** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
2253You can now specify any number of octal digits.
2254RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
2255any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
2256
2257** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
2258functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
2259
2260Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
2261Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
2262
2263Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
2264mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
2265
2266** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
2267complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
2268in the buffer before point.
2269
2270With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
2271symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
2272you are using.
2273
2274With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
2275just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
2276
2277** File locking works with NFS now.
2278
2279The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
2280in the same directory as FILENAME.
2281
2282This means that collision detection between two different machines now
2283works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
2284can become a bottleneck.
2285
2286The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
2287does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
2288create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
2289file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
2290rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
2291so useful that the change is worth while.
2292
2293When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
2294are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
2295collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
2296tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
2297
2298** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
2299it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
2300show-paren-mode.
2301
2302** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
2303selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
2304delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
2305
2306** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
2307within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
2308complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
2309
2310** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
2311it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
2312set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
2313
2314** Changes in View mode.
2315
2316*** Several new commands are available in View mode.
2317Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
2318
2319*** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
2320view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
2321
2322*** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
2323previous state.
2324
2325*** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
2326scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
2327
2328*** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
2329non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
2330not just the selected window.
2331
2332*** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
2333read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
2334turns View mode on or off.
2335
2336*** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
2337how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
2338delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
2339
2340** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
2341now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
2342
2343** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
2344has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
2345presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
2346which version to compare with.
2347
2348** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
2349blocks if a match is inside the block.
2350
2351The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
2352is outside the block. By customizing the variable
2353isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
2354shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
2355
2356By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
2357of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
2358blocks, all of them or none.
2359
2360** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
2361current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
2362confirmation first.
2363
2364** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
2365now changes the major mode according to that file name.
2366However, the mode will not be changed if
2367(1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
2368(2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
2369 not suitable for ordinary files, or
2370(3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
2371
2372This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
2373
2374However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
2375these commands do not change the major mode.
2376
2377** M-x occur changes.
2378
2379*** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
2380it performs a case-sensitive search.
2381
2382*** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
2383if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
2384using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
2385
2386** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
2387in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
2388window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
2389that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
2390buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
2391
2392** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
2393after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
2394appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
2395come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
2396
2397** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
2398selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
2399buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
2400
2401** Outline mode changes.
2402
2403*** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
2404
2405*** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
2406
2407** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
2408you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
2409Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
2410was already active.
2411
2412The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
2413unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
2414get confused by it.
2415
2416If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
2417set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
2418
2419** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
2420
2421*** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
2422conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
2423character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
2424including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
2425
2426The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
2427mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
2428copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
2429
2430*** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
2431are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
2432values.
2433
2434`dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
2435case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
2436`dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
2437case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
2438
2439** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
2440certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
2441can be. The default value is 30.
2442
2443** Changes in Mail mode.
2444
2445*** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
2446Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
2447composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
2448`mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
2449`sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
2450behavior.
2451
2452C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
2453compose-mail-other-frame.
2454
2455*** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
2456the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
2457replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
2458buffer that shows the original message.
2459
2460*** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
2461with separator lines around the contents.
2462
2463*** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
2464in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
2465definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
2466need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
2467
2468*** New features in the mail-complete command.
2469
2470**** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
2471for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
2472controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
2473Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
2474
2475**** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
2476to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
2477/etc/passwd.
2478
2479**** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
2480to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
2481/etc/passwd.
2482
2483** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
2484special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
2485directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
2486reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
2487
2488Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
2489when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
2490be taken to be magic.
2491
2492** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
2493files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
2494available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
2495
2496M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
2497(-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
2498
2499** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
2500suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
2501
2502In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
2503
2504new key dired.el binding old key
2505------- ---------------- -------
2506 * c dired-change-marks c
2507 * m dired-mark m
2508 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
2509 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
2510 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
2511 * u dired-unmark u
2512 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
2513 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
2514 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
2515 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
2516 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
2517 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
2518
2519** Rmail changes.
2520
2521*** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
2522saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
2523chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
2524each time you run it.
2525
2526*** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
2527whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
2528
2529*** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
2530messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
2531means to move in the opposite direction.
2532
2533*** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
2534you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
2535
2536*** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
2537just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
2538It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
2539can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
2540for output.
2541
2542** Gnus changes.
2543
2544*** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
2545
2546*** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
2547Gnus.
2548
2549*** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
2550`and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
2551
2552*** Article washing status can be displayed in the
2553article mode line.
2554
2555*** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
2556
2557*** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
2558
2559(setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
2560
2561*** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
2562are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
2563`gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
2564
2565*** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
2566
2567*** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
2568
2569*** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
2570See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
2571
2572*** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
2573Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
2574used to pick articles.
2575
2576*** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
2577another have been added.
2578
2579 `M-x gnus-change-server'
2580
2581*** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
2582generating lines in buffers.
2583
2584*** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
2585`M-C-_'.
2586
2587*** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
2588
2589*** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
2590
2591 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
2592
2593*** Scores can be decayed.
2594
2595 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
2596
2597*** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
2598Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
2599
2600*** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
2601the native server.
2602
2603 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
2604
2605*** A new command for reading collections of documents
2606(nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
2607
2608*** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
2609
2610*** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
2611even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
2612
2613*** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
2614(DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
2615
2616 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
2617 a group.
2618
2619*** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
2620sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
2621
2622 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
2623
2624*** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
2625
2626 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
2627
2628*** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
2629
2630 Use the `Y c' command.
2631
2632*** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
2633
2634*** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
2635
2636 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
2637
2638*** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
2639from incoming mail before saving the mail.
2640
2641 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
2642
2643*** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
2644
2645*** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
2646the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
2647
2648 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
2649
2650Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
2651and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
2652from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
2653hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
2654this issue.)
2655
2656Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
2657automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
2658particular news group. This can be done by:
2659
2660 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
2661
2662Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
2663of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
2664"XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
2665system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
2666for reading and posting).
2667
2668CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
2669 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
2670Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
2671newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
2672there.
2673
2674Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
2675default. Here are some of these default settings:
2676
2677 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
2678 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
2679 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
2680 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
2681 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
2682
2683When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
2684the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
2685
2686** CC mode changes.
2687
2688*** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
2689code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
2690values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
2691this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
2692Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
2693loaded.
2694
2695If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
2696Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
2697style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
2698share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
2699c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
2700must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
2701
2702*** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
2703of the current buffer.
2704
2705*** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
2706it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
2707of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
2708
2709*** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
2710style that the Python developers like.
2711
2712*** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
2713This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
2714just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
2715
2716** VC Changes [new]
2717
2718** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
2719name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
2720directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
2721
2722This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
2723master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
2724developers.
2725
2726You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
2727RET in a buffer visiting that file.
2728
2729*** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
2730other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
2731writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
2732calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
2733
2734*** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
2735version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
2736
2737** Calendar changes.
2738
2739A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
2740of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
2741for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
2742
2743** ps-print changes
2744
2745There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
2746
2747*** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
2748
2749The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
2750formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
2751`a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
2752`ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
2753It defaults to `letter'.
2754If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
2755
2756The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
2757of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
2758non-nil means "landscape" mode.
2759
2760The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
2761It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
2762It defaults to 1.
2763
2764*** Horizontal layout
2765
2766The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
2767`ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
2768All are measured in points.
2769
2770*** Vertical layout
2771
2772The vertical layout is determined by the variables
2773`ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
2774All are measured in points.
2775
2776*** Headers
2777
2778If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
2779`ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
2780margin above the text.
2781
2782If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
2783framing box is printed around the header.
2784
2785The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
2786`ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
2787
2788The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
2789`ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
2790`ps-header-font-size'.
2791
2792*** Font managing
2793
2794The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
2795used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
2796`ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
2797elements to this alist.
2798
2799The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
2800for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
2801
2802** hideshow changes.
2803
2804*** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
2805C++, ; for lisp).
2806
2807*** Support for java-mode added.
2808
2809*** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
2810in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
2811
2812*** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
2813the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
2814way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
2815
2816*** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
2817robust and a lot faster.
2818
2819*** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
2820
2821*** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
2822to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
2823documentation for more details.
2824
2825** Changes in Enriched mode.
2826
2827*** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
2828filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
2829of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
2830use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
2831the next time unless the fill-column is different.
2832
2833*** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
2834distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
2835as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
2836as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
2837
2838** Font Lock mode
2839
2840*** Custom support
2841
2842The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
2843font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
2844faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
2845group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
2846your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
2847consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
2848
2849You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
2850
2851*** Maximum decoration
2852
2853Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
2854default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
2855of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
2856supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
2857to get the old behavior.
2858
2859*** New support
2860
2861Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
2862
2863Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
2864support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
2865
2866*** Configurable support
2867
2868Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
2869additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
2870c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
2871java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
2872list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
2873of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
2874convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
2875
2876Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
2877way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
2878it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
2879
2880*** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
2881
2882You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
2883highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
2884for any mode.
2885
2886For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
2887
2888 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
2889
2890in your ~/.emacs.
2891
2892*** New faces
2893
2894Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
2895font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
2896distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
2897to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
2898
2899*** Changes to fast-lock support mode
2900
2901The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
2902cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
2903same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
2904
2905*** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
2906
2907The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
2908according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
2909the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
2910non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
2911refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
2912the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
2913Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
2914
2915This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
2916For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
2917this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
2918refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
2919containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
2920the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
2921
2922As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
2923
2924Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
2925Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
2926Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
2927new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
2928
2929If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
2930settings.
2931
2932** Ada mode changes.
2933
2934*** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
2935If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
2936procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
2937you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
2938stubs.
2939
2940*** There are two new commands:
2941 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
2942 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
2943
2944The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
2945`ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
2946`ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
2947
2948*** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
2949is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
2950Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
2951
2952*** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
2953formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
2954places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
2955space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
2956
2957** Scheme mode changes.
2958
2959*** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
2960mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
2961for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
2962with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
2963have any effect.
2964
2965If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
2966still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
2967scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
2968variables as buffer-local variables.
2969
2970*** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
2971Use M-x dsssl-mode.
2972
2973** Changes to the emacsclient program
2974
2975*** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
2976USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
2977associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
2978can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
2979
2980*** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
2981it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
2982buffer in Emacs.
2983
2984*** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
2985use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
2986ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
2987option takes precedence.
2988
2989** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
2990constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
2991(in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
2992
2993** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
2994which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
2995the current defun.
2996
2997** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
2998following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
2999
3000** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
3001and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
3002necessary).
3003
3004** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
3005if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
3006these register values no longer become completely useless.
3007If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
3008asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
3009it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
3010
3011** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
3012example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
3013be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
3014you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
3015
3016You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
3017variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
3018file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
3019revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
3020only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
3021
3022** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
3023since it applies only to the current frame.
3024
3025** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
3026file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
3027and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
3028
3029This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
3030multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
3031variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
3032tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
3033instead of just the file you are editing.
3034
3035** RefTeX mode
3036
3037RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
3038and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
3039different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
3040multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
3041turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
3042
3043C-c ( reftex-label
3044 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
3045 knows which kind of label is needed.
3046
3047C-c ) reftex-reference
3048 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
3049 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
3050
3051C-c [ reftex-citation
3052 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
3053 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
3054
3055C-c & reftex-view-crossref
3056 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
3057
3058C-c = reftex-toc
3059 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
3060 can quickly jump to every section.
3061
3062Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
3063commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
3064Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
3065reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
3066C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
3067
3068** Changes in BibTeX mode.
3069
3070*** Info documentation is now available.
3071
3072*** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
3073both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
3074
3075*** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
3076bibtex-user-optional-fields.
3077
3078*** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
3079(use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
3080
3081*** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
3082entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
3083appropriate functions.
3084
3085*** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
3086entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
3087
3088*** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
3089been cleaned.
3090
3091*** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
3092bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
3093
3094*** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
3095shall be delimited.
3096
3097*** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
3098bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
3099bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
3100
3101*** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
3102field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
3103prefixed with `ALT'.
3104
3105*** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
3106bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
3107formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
3108documentation).
3109
3110*** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
3111documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
3112for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
3113
3114*** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
3115comma should be inserted at end of last field.
3116
3117*** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
3118alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
3119signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
3120
3121*** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
3122
3123*** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
3124
3125*** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
3126from alien sources.
3127
3128*** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
3129to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
3130crossref entries.
3131
3132*** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
3133region.
3134
3135*** Added support for imenu.
3136
3137*** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
3138of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
3139`compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
3140`next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
3141
3142*** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
3143from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
3144
3145** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
3146
3147** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
3148
3149** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
3150functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
3151Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
3152as an argument.
3153
3154When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
3155and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
3156
3157** browse-url changes
3158
3159*** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
3160Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
3161(browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
3162non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
3163customization variables.
3164
3165*** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
3166
3167*** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
3168lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
3169(e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
3170
3171** Changes in Ediff
3172
3173*** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
3174pops up the Info file for this command.
3175
3176*** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
3177the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
3178merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
3179directories).
3180
3181*** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
3182and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
3183files in the same directory.
3184
3185*** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
3186The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
3187related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
3188
3189** Changes in Viper
3190
3191*** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
3192*** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
3193 instead of vip-.
3194*** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
3195*** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
3196Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
3197*** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
3198*** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
3199*** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
3200color when Viper is in insert state.
3201*** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
3202Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
3203viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
3204
3205** Etags changes.
3206
3207*** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
3208default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
3209Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
3210variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
3211not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
3212
3213*** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
3214
3215*** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
3216constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
3217
3218*** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
3219recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
3220In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
3221
3222*** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
3223C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
3224recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
3225methods and protocols.
3226
3227*** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
3228.cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
3229column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
3230paragraph name.
3231
3232*** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
3233an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
3234at least M times and as many as N times.
3235
3236** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
3237in files has changed slightly.
3238
3239With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
3240time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
3241This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
3242with old time-stamp-format values.
3243
3244In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
3245(`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
3246This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
3247reasons.
3248
3249In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
3250natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
3251fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
3252(`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
3253time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
3254specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
3255
3256Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
3257case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
3258truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
3259
3260The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
3261being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
3262future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
3263recommended now will continue to work then.
3264
3265See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
3266details.
3267
3268** There are some additional major modes:
3269
3270dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
3271m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
3272meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
3273
3274** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
3275copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
3276into Emacs.
3277
3278** New Lisp packages include:
3279
3280*** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
3281
3282*** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
3283be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
3284
3285*** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
3286
3287*** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
3288in shell buffers.
3289
3290*** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
3291See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
3292and `elint-defun'.
3293
3294*** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
3295meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
3296ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
3297strings or comments.
3298
3299These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
3300abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
3301you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
3302insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
3303at these points.
3304
3305*** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
3306can visit them by short forms of their names.
3307
3308*** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
3309Emacs Lisp function at point.
3310
3311*** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
3312
3313*** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
3314switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
3315
3316*** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
3317
3318*** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
3319
3320*** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
3321
3322*** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
3323from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
3324
3325*** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
3326You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
3327inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
3328original place after inserting the copy.
3329
3330*** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
3331on the buffer.
3332
3333You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
3334velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
3335(with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
3336
3337Enable mouse-drag with:
3338 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
3339-or-
3340 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
3341
3342*** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
3343mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
3344
3345*** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
3346It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
3347
3348*** ogonek
3349
3350The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
3351Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
3352platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
3353TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
3354ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
3355prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
3356instance) and vice versa.
3357
3358To use this package load it using
3359 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
3360Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
3361 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
3362 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
3363The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
3364ways of customization in `.emacs'.
3365
3366*** Interface to ph.
3367
3368Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
3369
3370The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
3371services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
3372these servers.
3373
3374*** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
3375
3376*** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
3377You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
3378while the real cursor does not move.
3379
3380*** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
3381for visiting your favorite web sites.
3382
3383*** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
3384so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
3385
3386** movemail change
3387
3388Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
3389mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
3390supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
3391user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
3392
3393This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
3394
3395* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
3396
3397** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
3398
3399Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
3400end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
3401Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
3402file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
3403file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
3404
3405To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
3406C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
3407coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
3408specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
3409LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
3410save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
3411
3412* Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
3413
3414** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
3415Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
3416vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
3417Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
3418
3419** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
3420to start with w32- instead of win32-.
3421
3422In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
3423don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
3424"win".
3425
3426** Basic Lisp changes
3427
3428*** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
3429evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
3430
3431*** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
3432be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
3433or by the user.
3434
3435The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
3436
3437*** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
3438
3439(when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
3440(unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
3441
3442*** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
3443usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
3444its argument.
3445
3446*** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
3447
3448*** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
3449
3450*** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
3451
3452*** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
3453error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
3454include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
3455`format' function.
3456
3457*** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
3458or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
3459whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
3460
3461*** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
3462either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
3463adding one of these suffixes.
3464
3465*** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
3466which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
3467If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
3468
3469We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
3470because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
3471
3472*** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
3473
3474*** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
3475You must load the `cl' library to define it.
3476
3477*** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
3478conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
3479
3480 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
3481
3482BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
3483BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
3484
3485*** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
3486choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
3487restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
3488works using `save-current-buffer'.
3489
3490*** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
3491write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
3492of the last form.
3493
3494*** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
3495which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
3496last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
3497as the last form.
3498
3499*** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
3500characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
3501matches.
3502
3503For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
3504
3505*** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
3506with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
3507Then it returns that string.
3508
3509For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
3510
3511(with-output-to-string
3512 (princ "The buffer is ")
3513 (princ (buffer-name)))
3514
3515returns "The buffer is foo".
3516
3517** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
3518is non-nil.
3519
3520These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
3521buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
3522characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
3523
3524*** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
3525a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
3526
3527Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
3528character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
3529Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
3530position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
3531characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
3532 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
3533
3534ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
3535Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
3536non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
3537characters".
3538
3539The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
3540through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
3541"leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
3542range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
3543leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
3544
3545*** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
3546(forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
3547multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
3548character, which may be more than one buffer position.
3549
3550This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
3551always one buffer position, need to be changed.
3552
3553However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
3554
3555*** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
3556because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
3557have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
3558the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
3559guaranteed.
3560
3561*** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
3562between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
3563character).
3564
3565When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
3566
3567 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
3568 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
3569 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
3570 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
3571 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
3572
3573*** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
3574
3575*** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
3576`length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
3577more than the number of characters.
3578
3579You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
3580it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
3581\xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
3582is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
3583follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
3584newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
3585
3586*** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
3587and returns a string containing those characters.
3588
3589*** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
3590(sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
3591counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
3592character, sref signals an error.
3593
3594*** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
3595in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
3596string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
3597
3598*** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
3599in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
3600region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
3601
3602*** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
3603the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
3604to a vector of the characters in it.
3605
3606*** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
3607of a string. You call it as follows:
3608
3609 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
3610
3611This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
3612STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
3613This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
3614Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
3615it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
3616
3617*** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
3618if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
3619
3620*** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
3621if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
3622
3623*** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
3624to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
3625not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
3626which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
3627
3628(truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
3629
3630This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
3631
3632The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
3633If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
3634are not included in the resulting value.
3635
3636The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
3637at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
3638WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
3639is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
3640
3641If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
3642place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
3643character extends across that column), then the padding character
3644PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
3645string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
3646column START-COLUMN.
3647
3648*** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
3649the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
3650necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
3651difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
3652changed text, before the change.
3653
3654*** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
3655sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
3656one character set for each script, not for each language.
3657
3658**** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
3659
3660**** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
3661
3662**** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
3663set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
3664
3665**** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
3666name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
3667which identify the character within that character set.
3668
3669**** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
3670byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
3671opposite of split-char.
3672
3673**** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
3674of all the characters between BEG and END.
3675
3676**** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
3677of all the characters in a string.
3678
3679*** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
3680and specifying coding systems.
3681
3682**** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
3683system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
3684of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
3685(Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
3686and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
3687as what to do about code conversion.)
3688
3689**** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
3690name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
3691
3692**** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
3693for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
3694except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
3695
3696Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
3697which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
3698to match against a file name.
3699
3700VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
3701a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
3702decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
3703to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
3704systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
3705specifies the coding system for encoding.
3706
3707If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
3708or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
3709
3710**** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
3711the coding system to use for network sockets.
3712
3713Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
3714which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
3715either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
3716service names.
3717
3718VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
3719a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
3720decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
3721to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
3722systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
3723specifies the coding system for encoding.
3724
3725If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
3726or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
3727
3728**** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
3729for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
3730except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
3731start the subprocess.
3732
3733**** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
3734systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
3735when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
3736(OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
3737to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
3738
3739**** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
3740coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
3741subprocess.
3742
3743It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
3744but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
3745start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
3746connection permanently or until overridden.
3747
3748The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
3749file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
3750network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
3751coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
3752It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
3753system for one operation at a time.
3754
3755**** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
3756files, subprocesses or network connections.
3757
3758**** The function process-coding-system tells you what
3759coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
3760The value is a cons cell,
3761 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
3762where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
3763the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
3764input to the subprocess.
3765
3766**** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
3767change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
3768
3769** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
3770customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
3771you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
3772
3773You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
3774variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
3775information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
3776legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
3777customization.
3778
3779Thus, instead of writing
3780
3781 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
3782 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
3783
3784you would now write this:
3785
3786 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
3787 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
3788 :type 'boolean
3789 :group foo)
3790
3791The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
3792two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
3793describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
3794for a description of them.
3795
3796The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
3797should belong to. You define a new group like this:
3798
3799 (defgroup ispell nil
3800 "Spell checking using Ispell."
3801 :group 'processes)
3802
3803The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
3804group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
3805but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
3806to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
3807second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
3808
3809Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
3810package should have just one group; a more complex package should
3811have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
3812package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
3813first-level subgroups.
3814
3815** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
3816
3817This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
3818separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
3819
3820** easy-mmode
3821
3822The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
3823developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
3824only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
3825predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
3826`easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
3827`easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
3828
3829** Text property changes
3830
3831*** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
3832text property.
3833
3834*** The new functions next-char-property-change and
3835previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
3836place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
3837functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
3838starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
3839
3840If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
3841LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
3842of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
3843position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
3844
3845*** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
3846value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
3847is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
3848
3849** Changes in invisibility features
3850
3851*** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
3852hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
3853is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
3854should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
3855would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
3856make the overlay visible.
3857
3858During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
3859invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
3860needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
3861which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
3862the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
3863t when it should hide it.
3864
3865*** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
3866
3867Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
3868invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
3869and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
3870Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
3871manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
3872Here is an example of how to do this:
3873
3874 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
3875 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
3876 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
3877 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
3878
3879 ...
3880 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
3881
3882 ...
3883 ;; When done with the overlays:
3884 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
3885 ;; Or respectively:
3886 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
3887
3888** Changes in syntax parsing.
3889
3890*** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
3891`parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
3892obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
3893`parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
3894
3895If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
3896is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
3897used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
3898
3899When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
3900character in the buffer is calculated thus:
3901
3902 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
3903 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
3904
3905 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
3906 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
3907 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
3908
3909 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
3910 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
3911 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
3912 determine the syntax type of the character.
3913
3914 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
3915 of the current buffer.
3916
3917*** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
3918value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
3919for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
3920
3921*** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
3922and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
3923only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
3924character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
3925another character with the same code (unless quoted).
3926
3927These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
3928text property.
3929
3930*** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
3931arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
3932of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
3933
3934*** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
3935(and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
3936element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
3937nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
3938string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
3939
3940*** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
3941syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
3942`font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
3943
3944** Changes in face features
3945
3946*** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
3947if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
3948
3949*** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
3950of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
3951
3952*** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
3953set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
3954
3955*** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
3956set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
3957
3958*** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
3959by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
3960and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
3961the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
3962overlay property).
3963
3964This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
3965arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
3966
3967** Changes in file-handling functions
3968
3969*** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
3970directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
3971they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
3972is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
3973
3974This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
3975begins with ~.
3976
3977*** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
3978it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
3979
3980*** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3981the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
3982
3983*** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
3984as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
3985
3986*** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
3987character code conversion as well as other things.
3988
3989Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
3990(formerly it did not).
3991
3992*** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
3993environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
3994
3995*** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
3996instead of constant strings.
3997
3998*** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
3999to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
4000any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
4001
4002substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
4003in the same way as before.
4004
4005*** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
4006The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
4007which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
4008
4009*** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
4010error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
4011else, and returns nil.
4012
4013*** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
4014directory cannot be listed.
4015
4016** Changes in minibuffer input
4017
4018*** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
4019read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
4020additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
4021argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
4022ways:
4023
4024 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
4025 It is available through the history command M-n.
4026
4027*** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
4028read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
4029argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
4030minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
4031enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
4032
4033In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
4034argument in this way.
4035
4036*** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
4037from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
4038minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
4039
4040** Echo area features
4041
4042*** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
4043echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
4044minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
4045after the echo area is cleared.
4046
4047*** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
4048in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
4049
4050** Keyboard input features
4051
4052*** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
4053set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
4054
4055*** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
4056received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
4057by keyboard macros.
4058
4059** Frame-related changes
4060
4061*** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
4062creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
4063hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
4064
4065*** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
4066the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
4067has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
4068
4069*** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
4070selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
4071value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
4072in the selected frame.
4073
4074*** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
4075is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
4076which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
4077
4078** X Windows features
4079
4080*** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
4081x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
4082x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
4083
4084*** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
4085The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
4086
4087*** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
4088MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
4089A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
4090
4091If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
4092it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
4093
4094** Subprocess features
4095
4096*** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
4097functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
4098automatically.
4099
4100*** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
4101and returns the output from the command as a string.
4102
4103*** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
4104and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
4105
4106** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
4107does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
4108
4109** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
4110at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
4111goes after the other menu items.
4112
4113** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
4114of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
4115around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
4116are in use.
4117
4118The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
4119series of several changes--if that seems safe.
4120
4121Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
4122after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
4123form.
4124
4125** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
4126is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
4127but its hook is still run.
4128
4129** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
4130for errors that are handled by condition-case.
4131
4132If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
4133regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
4134useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
4135
4136This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
4137are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
4138filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
4139warned.
4140
4141** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
4142way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
4143
4144** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
4145integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
4146functions like display-time.
4147
4148** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
4149name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
4150
4151** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
4152can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
4153is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
4154
4155** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
4156if there is an error in compilation.
4157
4158** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
4159switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
4160argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
4161they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
4162
4163** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
4164Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
4165the *scratch* buffer.
4166
4167** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
4168The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
4169where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
4170e.g., in Font Lock mode.
4171
4172** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
4173and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
4174It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
4175
4176** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
4177using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
4178variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
4179and compose-mail-other-frame.
4180
4181** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
4182can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
4183full name of the specified user will be returned.
4184
4185** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
4186of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
4187where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
4188in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
4189option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
4190files at all.
4191
4192** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
4193and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
4194width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
4195the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
4196
4197For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
4198minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
4199with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
4200is how %S normally pads to two positions.
4201
4202** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
4203
4204** imenu.el changes.
4205
4206You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
4207item from menu created by imenu.
4208
4209An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
4210#include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
4211select one of those items.
4212
4213* Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
4214
4215* Changes in Emacs 19.33.
4216
4217** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
4218mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
4219
4220** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
4221use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
4222Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
4223
4224* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
4225
4226** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
4227To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
4228
4229** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
4230conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
4231matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
4232expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
4233word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
4234all caps.
4235
4236** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
4237at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
4238
4239When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
4240does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
4241as in previous Emacs versions.
4242
4243** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
4244non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
4245time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
4246frames.
4247
4248** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
4249if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
4250This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
4251Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
4252accident.
4253
4254** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
4255keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
4256It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
4257line and then executing the macro.
4258
4259This command is not new, but was never documented before.
4260
4261** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
4262(something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
4263characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
4264characters.
4265
4266** Font Lock mode
4267
4268*** Font Lock support modes
4269
4270Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
4271below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
4272hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
4273to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
4274Font Lock mode is enabled.
4275
4276For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
4277
4278 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
4279
4280in your ~/.emacs.
4281
4282*** lazy-lock
4283
4284The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
4285only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
4286becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
4287Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
4288occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
4289buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
4290Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
4291
4292To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
4293
4294 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
4295
4296To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
4297
4298** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4299
4300*** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
4301paren and key.
4302
4303*** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
4304supported.
4305
4306** Gnus changes.
4307
4308Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
4309commands and variables have been added. There should be no
4310significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
4311previously released version, except in the message composition area.
4312
4313Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
4314between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
4315
4316*** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
4317variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
4318obsolete.
4319
4320*** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
4321missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
4322
4323 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
4324
4325*** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
4326
4327 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
4328
4329*** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
4330referred.
4331
4332*** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
4333
4334 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
4335
4336*** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
4337
4338 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
4339
4340*** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
4341buffers.
4342
4343 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
4344
4345*** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
4346
4347 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
4348
4349*** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
4350
4351 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
4352
4353*** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
4354
4355 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
4356
4357*** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
4358is possible.
4359
4360 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
4361
4362*** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
4363groups of groups.
4364
4365*** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
4366
4367*** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
4368batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
4369
4370*** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
4371
4372*** The Gnus cache is much faster.
4373
4374*** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
4375
4376 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
4377
4378*** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
4379expiration times.
4380
4381*** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
4382
4383*** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
4384process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
4385
4386*** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
4387articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
4388bound to keys on the `/' submap.
4389
4390*** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
4391articles with the `*' command.
4392
4393*** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
4394
4395*** Article headers can be buttonized.
4396
4397 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
4398
4399*** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
4400
4401*** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
4402`nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
4403
4404*** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
4405buffer.
4406
4407*** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
4408
4409*** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
4410
4411*** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
4412
4413 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
4414
4415*** Groups can be made permanently visible.
4416
4417 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
4418
4419*** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
4420
4421*** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
4422
4423*** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
4424
4425 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
4426 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
4427
4428*** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
4429refetching.
4430
4431 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
4432
4433*** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
4434buffer to allow easier treatment.
4435
4436*** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
4437
4438*** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
4439
4440 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
4441
4442*** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
4443articles.
4444
4445 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
4446
4447*** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
4448
4449*** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
4450cited text to hide is now customizable.
4451
4452 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
4453
4454*** Boring headers can be hidden.
4455
4456 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
4457
4458*** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
4459
4460*** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
4461
4462The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
4463in greater detail.
4464
4465* Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
4466
4467** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
4468second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
4469asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
4470exists.
4471
4472** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
4473as well as lists.
4474
4475** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
4476of a given keymap.
4477
4478** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
4479given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
4480keymap or nil.
4481
4482** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
4483an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
4484name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
4485menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
4486equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
4487alias.
4488
4489* Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
4490
4491** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
4492
4493Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
4494This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
4495was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
4496far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
4497pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
4498
4499For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
4500you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
4501`http://www.vtw.org/'.
4502
4503** A note about C mode indentation customization.
4504
4505The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
4506do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
4507It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
4508much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
4509chapter of the manual for details.
4510
4511However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
4512customization variables take effect.
4513
4514** Marking with the mouse.
4515
4516When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
4517highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
4518using M-x transient-mark-mode.
4519
4520** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
4521
4522*** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
4523
4524*** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
4525to work on NT only and not on 95.)
4526
4527*** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
4528in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
4529you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
4530application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
4531applications, these problems are significant.
4532
4533If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
4534likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
4535However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
4536will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
4537other DOS application as a subprocess.
4538
4539Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
4540You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
4541
4542If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
4543subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
4544have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
4545Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
4546separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
4547Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
4548
4549** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
4550
4551This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
4552which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
4553minibuffer contains.
4554
4555** `title' frame parameter and resource.
4556
4557The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
4558It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
4559It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
4560affects just the displayed title of the frame.
4561
4562The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
4563it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
4564and also serves as the default for the displayed title
4565when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
4566
4567** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
4568enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
4569
4570** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
4571F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
4572Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
4573
4574If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
4575menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
4576something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
4577the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
4578
4579 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
4580
4581** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
4582to replace the characters it "deletes".
4583
4584** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
4585
4586** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
4587a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
4588select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
4589It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
4590immediately after the selected one.
4591
4592This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
4593made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
4594
4595** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
4596
4597Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
4598directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
4599If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
4600Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
4601recover-session.
4602
4603You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
4604auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
4605will not work.
4606
4607Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
4608normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
4609this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
4610bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
4611now that the bug is fixed.
4612
4613** Changes to Version Control (VC)
4614
4615There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
4616when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
4617Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
4618which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
4619
4620If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
4621telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
4622VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
4623the link is visited and a warning displayed.
4624
4625** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
4626Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
4627is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
4628
4629There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
4630Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
4631enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
4632The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
4633remain normal.
4634
4635** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
4636header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
4637
4638Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
4639known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
4640offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
4641Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
4642
4643Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
4644of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
4645a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
4646name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
4647documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
4648`mail-directory-stream'.)
4649
4650** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
4651skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
4652characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
4653with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
4654
4655Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
4656- to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
4657wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
4658
4659The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
4660less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
4661headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
4662Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
4663Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
4664fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
4665to a limitation in font-lock).
4666
4667External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
4668
4669** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
4670buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
4671buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
4672this example:
4673
4674 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
4675 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
4676
4677** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4678
4679*** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
4680
4681*** Font Lock mode is now supported.
4682
4683*** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
4684
4685*** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
4686entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
4687will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
4688isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
4689(bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
4690The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
4691
4692*** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
4693does the same job.
4694
4695*** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
4696"Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
4697
4698*** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
4699text.
4700
4701** Font Lock mode
4702
4703*** Global Font Lock mode
4704
4705Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
4706new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
4707font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
4708turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
4709on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
4710
4711For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
4712
4713 (global-font-lock-mode t)
4714
4715in your ~/.emacs.
4716
4717*** Local Refontification
4718
4719In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
4720However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
4721those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
4722command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
4723
4724In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
4725(The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
4726current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
4727above and below point.
4728
4729With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
4730
4731** Follow mode
4732
4733Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
4734buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
4735side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
4736they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
4737split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
4738follow-mode.
4739
4740M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
4741
4742To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
4743command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
4744
4745** hide-show changes.
4746
4747The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
4748to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
4749normal hooks.
4750
4751** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
4752The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
4753
4754** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
4755recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
4756those that begin a function, record, or macro.
4757
4758** MSDOS Changes
4759
4760*** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
4761Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
4762
4763*** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
4764and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
4765
4766*** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
4767
4768*** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
4769pressing both mouse buttons.
4770
4771*** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
4772restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
4773are:
4774
4775**** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
4776now works.
4777
4778**** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
4779
4780**** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
4781implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
4782
4783**** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
4784
4785**** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
4786
4787**** `M-x recover-session' works.
4788
4789**** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
4790
4791**** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
4792
4793* Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
4794
4795** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
4796tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
4797remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
4798this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
4799behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
4800
4801** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
4802
4803The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
4804not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
4805need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
4806be different.
4807
4808It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
4809than `system-type'.
4810
4811See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
4812
4813** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
4814now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
4815
4816** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
4817that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
4818
4819** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
4820no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
4821reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
4822
4823The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
4824to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
4825like this:
4826
4827 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
4828
4829SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
4830It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
4831becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
4832
4833REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
4834seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
4835means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
4836
4837*** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
4838up if too much time passes.
4839
4840 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
4841
4842This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
4843If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
4844of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
4845form in BODY.
4846
4847*** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
4848a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
4849call looks like this:
4850
4851 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
4852
4853SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
4854runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
4855timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
4856ARGS.
4857
4858Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
4859command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
4860command.
4861
4862REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
4863time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
4864does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
4865each time Emacs becomes idle.
4866
4867If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
4868idle for SECS seconds.
4869
4870*** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
4871all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
4872programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
4873instead.
4874
4875*** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
4876there is no answer within a certain time.
4877
4878 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
4879
4880asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
4881within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
4882Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
4883
4884** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
4885arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
4886meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
4887arguments in between are ignored.
4888
4889This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
4890the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
4891
4892** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
4893/usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
4894/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
4895site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
4896version.
4897
4898It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
4899version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
4900for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
4901has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
4902and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
4903problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
4904
4905** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
4906.abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
4907systems with limited file name syntax.
4908
4909Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
4910convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
4911for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
4912completions.el:
4913
4914(defvar save-completions-file-name
4915 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
4916 "*The filename to save completions to.")
4917
4918This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
4919depends on the operating system, because the definition of
4920convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
4921Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
4922MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
4923
4924** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
4925rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
4926minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
4927
4928** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
4929marker from its buffer position.
4930
4931** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
4932Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
4933The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
4934
4935** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
4936that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
4937condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
4938of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
4939matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
4940regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
4941
4942This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
4943errors that happen often during editing.
4944
4945** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
4946into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
4947puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
4948
4949** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
4950now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
4951
4952** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
4953a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
4954name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
4955to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
4956and not get-buffer-window.
4957
4958** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
4959calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
4960being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
4961
4962If you use this feature, you should set the variable
4963buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
4964property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
4965non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
4966are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
4967property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
4968over and over for the same text.
4969
4970** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
4971
4972*** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
4973in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
4974
4975;; @(#) HEADER: text
4976;; $HEADER: text $
4977
4978in addition to the normal
4979
4980;; HEADER: text
4981
4982*** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
4983checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
4984lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
4985
4986* For older news, see the file ONEWS.
4987
4988----------------------------------------------------------------------
4989Copyright information:
4990
4991Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4992
4993 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
4994 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
4995 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
4996 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
4997
4998 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
4999 of this document, or of portions of it,
5000 under the above conditions, provided also that they
5001 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
5002
5003Local variables:
5004mode: outline
5005paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$"
5006end: