GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 23 Jan 1999 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end for copying conditions. Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. For older news, see the file ONEWS. * Changes in Emacs 20.4 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el. You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'. Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way. If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file is the one that is used. ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous). Also, you can specify a place to put the error output, separate from the command's regular output. Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name. In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies the buffer name. When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there. ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom, is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs. ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name. ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches now have the same feature as occur and query-replace: if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then they never ignore case. ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a part of the general feature of coding system conversion. If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to the same format that was used in the file before. You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group. ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling. This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected. ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed. The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac). The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos, eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings, control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line format. You can now customize these variables. ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil. ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given windows just big enough to hold the whole contents. ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file doesn't have any effect. ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process, not one per buffer. ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line: (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup) ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el. To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the `auto-show-mode' command. ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then. ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel. ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil. ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode and variable specification, as well as on the first line. ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters. The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc. Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported. IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to `?' on other systems. IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on Unix. Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the current codepage when it starts. ** Mail changes *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than sendmail-coding-system and the local value of buffer-file-coding-system. You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing mail. *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters, if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them, Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a list of possible coding systems. ** CC Mode changes *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's docstring for details. *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied lineup functions use this feature currently. *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java. *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines. *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for anonymous classes. *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup function c-lineup-inexpr-block. *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's. c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified). *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default. *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line. *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren) for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed. *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero. *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace. This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that). ** Gnus changes. *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the Gnus manual for the full story. *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft group, which is created automatically. *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header values. *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's. *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message outside the region: `C-c C-v'. *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with `C-u C-c C-c'. *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization. *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit re-highlighting of the article buffer. *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'. *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details. *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file. *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater control over simplification. *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread. *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the limit. *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text. *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'. *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed. If you used this function in your initialization files, you must rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead. *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix `a' forces normal posting method. *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text -- `W d'. *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands' to a non-nil value. *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers. *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer has been added. *** A history of where mails have been split is available. *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'. *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting `gnus-score-thread-simplify'. *** A new function for citing in Message has been added -- `message-cite-original-without-signature'. *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command. *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has been added. *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable. *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command. *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend. *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb. *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated. ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "". *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET. *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'. All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell. *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur* buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular mismatch. ** Changes to RefTeX mode *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys. *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be removed from the label. *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'. *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the customization group `reftex-finding-files'. *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular expressions. *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers. ** New/deleted modes and packages *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'. *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'. *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer changes with a special face. *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el. * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better. This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets, conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters, and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details, check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual. The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim distribution when the config.bat script is run. ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.) ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external program. An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT, and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is ignored, as both programs have no useful switches. ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but was not documented clearly before. ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals. This includes Tetris and Snake. * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position return the position of the beginning or end of the current line. They both accept an optional argument, which has the same meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line. ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing, and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern. ** Changes in the file-attributes function. *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float. It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise. *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two integers. ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern. ** New functions for base64 conversion: The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported optionally. Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string. ** The new function process-running-child-p will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its terminal to its own child process. ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature: when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent. ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists. ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'. :included is an alias for :visible. easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used to move or copy menu entries. ** Multibyte editing changes *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and char-bytes in a loop typically as below: (setq char (sref str idx) idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx))) The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete. If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code: (charset-bytes (char-charset ch)) *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error: Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character across the boundary. *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases: o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and contains 8-bit characters. o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and contains invalid characters. *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct way. *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems. If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line. *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly compose Thai characters in a string. ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as menus should always use the third argument. ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char, read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil. ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases. ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous echo area contents. (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY) ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the requested feature cannot be loaded. ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the foreground color, background color or stipple pattern means to clear out that attribute. ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame. ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the end of with-output-to-temp-buffer. ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on the gap of the current buffer. ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way to convert between character positions and byte positions in the current buffer. ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs. These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check it back in after any modifications have been made. * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path. Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded. Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched. Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower. This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired results. ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago. * Changes in Emacs 20.3 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward, it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition. ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made within the region you originally specified, until either all of them are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that region. In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests selective undo. ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode. The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files, though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started. ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is something that most users not do. ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X. The coding system can make a difference for communication with other applications. C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and pasting operations. ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting `ps-printer-name'. ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor hits a new word. Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not to be confused by TeX commands. You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu of various alternative replacements and actions. Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if flyspell-sort-corrections is nil. Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil. ** Changes in input method usage. Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p respectively. You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion. If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one of the alternatives with Mouse-2. The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'. If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given. If the value is t, extra guidance is always given. If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py. If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is given in the following case: o When you are using a complex input method. o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer. If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice, and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with, setting it to t is helpful. The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method. In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following keys: Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language environment. ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to get /usr/foo//etc/passwd which stands for the file /etc/passwd. Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list. Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list. ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve its owner and group. ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries. ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle contents before inserting the specified string on each line. ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified by the left edge of the rectangle. ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG, increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful for writing keyboard macros. ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories, files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and info. ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%. ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region contents only. ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM says whether to ask for confirmation in this case. ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file literally. If you say no, it signals an error. ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook. Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is inconsistent with Emacs conventions. ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or failure if the command produces no output. ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move the mouse. ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related function and variable names. ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for reading specific files. This has higher priority than file-coding-system-alist. ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed according to the current fontset. ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed. The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and nonascii-insert-offset. For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters. ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning. ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search. ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant command keys. ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions. Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at all variables that have documentation. ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap it should show; the default is 20. Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode, the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole of your input. ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all the customizable options which were changed since that version. Newly added options are included as well. If you don't specify a particular version number argument, then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded. This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the Customize menu. ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command. ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were invoked. ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment. The default is 1. ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block sensibly. ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger. ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make two entries in one day for one file, and combine them. ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically every night. ** All you need to do, to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom. ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to read and post multi-lingual articles. ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is made invisible again. ** Mail reading and sending changes *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently toggle. *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file, now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if the message has no subject, is stored in the variable rmail-default-body-file. *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use. *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string, it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression is evaluated to insert the signature. *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be especially interested in trying feedmail. feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features provided by feedmail are: **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users); there is also a queue for draft messages **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and be prompted for confirmation **** does smart filling of address headers **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail, /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp) ** Dired changes *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T". *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily run Dired on the directory name at point. *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match for a specified regexp. ** VC Changes *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control conveniently. *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary Dired. VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive listing of all files at or below the given directory which are currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown). You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil, then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i' on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired. All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked. The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command, `* l', to mark all files currently locked. Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output. *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff session to resolve them. Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS uses as well). *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file. If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively, using ediff. ** Changes in Font Lock *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face. ** Frame name display changes *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or when many frames are invisible or iconified. *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames menu. ** Comint (subshell) changes *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this. *** There are new commands in Comint mode. C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history; that is, the line after the last line you got. You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one. C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to send the current line together with the following line, when you send the following line. C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark, which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the previously sent input. C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input; it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input as the search string. *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll automatically in compilation-mode windows. ** C mode changes *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation, and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro definition. *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations. Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu" style is still the default however. *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style. *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer them. They do not have key bindings by default. *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement) and M-e (c-end-of-statement). *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace. *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets makes the style variables local to that buffer only. *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren, c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change. *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default. ** Changes to hippie-expand. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for, which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when expanding dynamically. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched. *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'. *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied. ** Changes in BibTeX mode. *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during automatic key generation. This replaces variable bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches against the first word in the title. *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations, bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting. *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert. ** Changes in vcursor.el. *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps. *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the Editing group once the package is loaded. *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour. *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command. ** Ispell changes. *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings are identified by syntax tables in effect. *** Generic region skipping implemented. A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user defined. New applications and improvements made available by this include: o URLs are automatically skipped o EMail message checking is vastly improved. *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals. ** Changes to RefTeX mode RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the section `Optimizations' in the manual. *** New recursive parser. The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new recursive parser scans the individual files. *** Parsing only part of a document. Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t. (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t) *** Storing parsing information in a file. This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use (setq reftex-save-parse-info t) *** Using multiple selection buffers If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t) *** References to external documents. The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )'). The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer. *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default. The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands, and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution. Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly. *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc* buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'. *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes. The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map', `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?' at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out more. *** Support for the varioref package The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref. *** New hooks Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references, and citations are created. These hooks are `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function', `reftex-format-cite-function'. *** Citations outside LaTeX The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details. *** Short context is no longer fontified. The short context in the label menu no longer copies the fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be fontified, use (setq reftex-refontify-context t) ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument. With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of the file name within its directory; it only checks for other directories that contain the same file name. Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present directory. ** New modes and packages *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode. It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer it, but some do not. *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL code. *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move around in a buffer. Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu. *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an established system of notation similar to Chess. *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual. *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and the like. *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to identify recently changed parts of the buffer text. *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize the user option `midnight-mode' to t. *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes. apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc) mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files Platform-specific modes: prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode. Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode. Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started. ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist, and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions. ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language environment. ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the current input method for reading this one event. ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte now control whether to output certain characters as backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not). * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3. ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1) always increases point by 1. The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted. See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters. ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'. Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's default value changed. For example, (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed." :type 'integer :group 'foo :version "20.3") (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group." :version "20.3") If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a `:version' in the top level group. This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command. ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray. However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables to themselves. If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil, this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any values whatever. ** There is a new debugger command, R. It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result in the buffer *Debugger-record*. ** Frame-local variables. You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have local bindings for that variable. These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the parameter name. Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings. Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding, that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active. It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect through a window-local binding would not be very robust. ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns. See the documentation in sregex.el. ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended. The contents of this field are not yet finalized. ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION. If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'. ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead. ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default. The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters empty input. ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names. Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string. ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal, echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments: a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a default password to use if the user enters nothing. ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the place where a break is being considered. If the function returns non-nil, then the line won't be broken there. ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE. If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the end of the window, even if this requires computation. ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME which specifies which frame's buffer list to use. If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list. ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer, holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window was directed to display this buffer. ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in other words, if they would give the same results if passed to set-window-configuration. ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of windows and the choice of buffers to display. ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP). If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist. minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers, and it is meant to be set by major modes. ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string except that it discards all text properties from the result. ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100. ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables. ** Menu changes *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now better supported. The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature; then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar. *** A new format for menu items is supported. In a keymap, a key binding that has the format (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING) defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that starts with the symbol `menu-item'. The format is: (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST) where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list. The supported properties include :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the item is enabled. :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the item should appear in the menu. :filter FILTER-FN FILTER-FN is a function of one argument, which will be REAL-BINDING. It should return a binding to use instead. :keys DESCRIPTION DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with `substitute-command-keys' before it is used. :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent keyboard binding. :key-sequence nil This means that the command normally has no keyboard equivalent. :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used). :button (TYPE . SELECTED) TYPE is :toggle or :radio. SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its value says whether this button is currently selected. Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu. Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported. (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item. ** New event types *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated, which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is: (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA) where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated forward, away from the user. As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows. *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically loaded into Emacs. The format is: (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES) where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames that were dragged and dropped. As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows. ** Changes relating to multibyte characters. *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only; any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte. *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape. *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were in Emacs 19 and before. The function chars-in-string has been deleted. The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'. *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation. This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation will count as two characters using unibyte representation. This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are consistent with the new representation. *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary; however, it makes a difference when you compare strings. The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them using the table nonascii-translation-table. *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings. The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer. *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte. *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte. *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte, so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string. You can specify whether to ignore case or not. *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal. *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the buffer or string being searched. One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular expression [^\0-\177] works for it. *** Structure of coding system changed. All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define your own alias name of a coding system by the function define-coding-system-alias. The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion, pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode, character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter `iso-8859-1'. Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new. The value of this property is a list of character sets which this coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance: (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1) Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode the other character sets and read it back correctly. *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string. This function requires a user interaction. *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of select-safe-coding-system. *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding was done. *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of coding systems used by some specific language environment. *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII characters are found, they now return a list of single element `undecided' or its subsidiaries. *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is converted. *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a coding system for communicating with other X clients. *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words, each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a range of characters. *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a Lisp object is a valid character code or not. *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character in the current buffer at position POS. *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first binding input-method-function to nil. The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by the input method function are not passed to the input method function, not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits. The input method function is not called when reading the second and subsequent events of a key sequence. *** You can customize any language environment by using set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook. The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding. * Changes in Emacs 20.1 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a tree structure. M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values. With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically in your .emacs file.) ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window. You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode. ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'. This makes more space in the mode line for other information. ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it kills the region. The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they delete the character before point, as usual. ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature by setting search-highlight to nil.) ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect, the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the past.) ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs. This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode). TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs. As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode, and is an alias for it. If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph, use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode. ** Scrolling changes *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil. In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line where it started. *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines. *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs recenters the window. ** International character set support (MULE) Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets, including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese, Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs") Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back into any of these coding systems when saving a file. Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used, generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or language, to make it possible to type them. The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377. The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods. You can disable multibyte character support as follows: (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil) Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte characters for their work until they want to change. *** Input methods An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use the same characters can share one input method). Some languages support several input methods. The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods work. A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of characters into one letter. Many European input methods use composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single letter. The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way. First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character". None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary. Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use; typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if the first guess is wrong. *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters) turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer. If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2. However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can translate automatically to and from either one. *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode. Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not what you want. If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off multibyte characters in that buffer. If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off character conversion as well. *** Displaying international characters on X Windows. A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script. Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports requires using many fonts. Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes. A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as you would use a font. If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot display that character. It will display an empty box instead. The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height, or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped, and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil. *** Defining fontsets. Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource. Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the standard fontset are created automatically. If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn' argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short name is `fontset-startup'. Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2... The resource value should have this form: FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]... FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except: * most fields should be just the wild card "*". * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset" * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset. The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number of times; each time specifies the font for one character set. CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set. Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING. You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name. For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the following resource, Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24 the font for ASCII is generated as below: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1 Here is the substitution rule: Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-. (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.) The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call that function explicitly to create a fontset. With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle fontsets. *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs defaults for a particular choice of language. Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The language environment may also specify a default choice of coding system for new files that you create. It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the whole Emacs session. For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this with (set-language-environment "Latin-1"). *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the coding systems that Emacs supports. *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument) lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file. This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name. After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system is used for *the immediately following command*. So if the immediately following command is a command to read or write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file. If the immediately following command does not use the coding system, then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect. For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1. *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*- construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*- to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end of the file. *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are translated into that character code. This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in various countries to support the languages of those countries. By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all. *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies the coding system for keyboard input. Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example, some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it. By default, keyboard input is not translated at all. Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are designed to work with terminals. *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system) specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess. This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the corresponding buffer. By default, process input and output are not translated at all. *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system to use for encoding file names before operating on them. It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system. *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you want to use. C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method. *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout. *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus related information. *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various scripts. *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays information about the support for a particular language. You specify the language as an argument. *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the first dash. A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters: A alternativnyj (Russian) B big5 (Chinese) C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese) C iso-2022-cn (Chinese) D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages) E euc-japan (Japanese) I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese) K euc-korea (Korean) R koi8 (Russian) Q tibetan S shift_jis (Japanese) T lao T tis620 (Thai) V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese) i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) k iso-2022-kr (Korean) v viqr (Vietnamese) z hz (Chinese) When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system), two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output. *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil. When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing Rmail files themselves. *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil. Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system for sending mail: - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority. - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it. - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used, if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment. - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used. *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English, Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional translations. ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer without any conversion. ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed. You can now specify any number of octal digits. RET terminates the digits and is discarded; any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input. ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for functions, variables and file names used in your programs. Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point. Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point. Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used. ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name in the buffer before point. With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that you are using. With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables, just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag). ** File locking works with NFS now. The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME, in the same directory as FILENAME. This means that collision detection between two different machines now works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory can become a bottleneck. The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is so useful that the change is worth while. When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just tell Emacs to go ahead anyway. ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses, it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call show-paren-mode. ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode. ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode. ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you, it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values. ** Changes in View mode. *** Several new commands are available in View mode. Do H in view mode for a list of commands. *** There are two new commands for entering View mode: view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame. *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their previous state. *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil, scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit. *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer, not just the selected window. *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only turns View mode on or off. *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil, delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it. ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log, now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version. ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version, has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks which version to compare with. ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden blocks if a match is inside the block. The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match is outside the block. By customizing the variable isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search. By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code blocks, all of them or none. ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for confirmation first. ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name, now changes the major mode according to that file name. However, the mode will not be changed if (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode, not suitable for ordinary files, or (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode. This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well. However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then these commands do not change the major mode. ** M-x occur changes. *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters, it performs a case-sensitive search. *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur, if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before. ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in that window unless you select to another window which shows the same buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window. ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information. ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the buffers recently selected in the selected frame. ** Outline mode changes. *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el). *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode. ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer. Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that was already active. The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then get confused by it. If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil. ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs. *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim. The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps. *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search' are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible values. `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace). `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search). ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they can be. The default value is 30. ** Changes in Mail mode. *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly. Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail composition mechanism you have selected with the variable `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old behavior. C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs compose-mail-other-frame. *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the buffer that shows the original message. *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message, with separator lines around the contents. *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail. *** New features in the mail-complete command. **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name, for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all. Its values are like those of mail-from-style. **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in /etc/passwd. **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used: /etc/passwd. ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'. Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise be taken to be magic. ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep. M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that. (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.) ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names suggest they are probably not needed in the long run. In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands. new key dired.el binding old key ------- ---------------- ------- * c dired-change-marks c * m dired-mark m * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted) * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted) * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted) * u dired-unmark u * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-? * ! dired-unmark-all-marks * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-} * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{ ** Rmail changes. *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing each time you run it. *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes. *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument means to move in the opposite direction. *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned. *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers. It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used for output. ** Gnus changes. *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion. *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into Gnus. *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection. *** Article washing status can be displayed in the article mode line. *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files. *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID. (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t) *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files are to be considered home score and adapt files. See `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'. *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics. *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable. *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions. See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'. *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like. Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be used to pick articles. *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to another have been added. `M-x gnus-change-server' *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when generating lines in buffers. *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with `M-C-_'. *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'. *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis: (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word)) *** Scores can be decayed. (setq gnus-decay-scores t) *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first. *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from the native server. `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups' *** A new command for reading collections of documents (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'. *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped. *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting. *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added. Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such a group. *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently. See the commands under the `T S' submap. *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently. See the commands under the `G P' submap. *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups. Use the `Y c' command. *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order. *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated. `M-x nnmail-split-history' *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk from incoming mail before saving the mail. See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'. *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files. *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute the following code, for instance, in your .emacs. (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize) Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling this issue.) Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a particular news group. This can be done by: (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM) Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both for reading and posting). CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM) Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages there. Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by default. Here are some of these default settings: (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7) (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312) (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312) (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5) (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr)) When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored; the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual. ** CC mode changes. *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java) code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file. Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is loaded. If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded. *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name of the current buffer. *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use. *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C style that the Python developers like. *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace. This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line, just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line. ** VC Changes [new] ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked). This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other developers. You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q RET in a buffer visiting that file. *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it. *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for version numbers, based on the current state of the file. ** Calendar changes. A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years. ** ps-print changes There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout. *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print formats for; it should contain one of the symbols: `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid' `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5' It defaults to `letter'. If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'. The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode, non-nil means "landscape" mode. The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer. It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode. It defaults to 1. *** Horizontal layout The horizontal layout is determined by the variables `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'. All are measured in points. *** Vertical layout The vertical layout is determined by the variables `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'. All are measured in points. *** Headers If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the margin above the text. If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy framing box is printed around the header. The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines', `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'. The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad', `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and `ps-header-font-size'. *** Font managing The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding elements to this alist. The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points. ** hideshow changes. *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for C++, ; for lisp). *** Support for java-mode added. *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set. *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'. *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more robust and a lot faster. *** A block beginning can span multiple lines. *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the documentation for more details. ** Changes in Enriched mode. *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled the next time unless the fill-column is different. *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text. ** Font Lock mode *** Custom support The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize. You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances. *** Maximum decoration Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil to get the old behavior. *** New support Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes. Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode. *** Configurable support Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types, c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it, java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification. Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types. *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs, for any mode. For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put: (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\ tex --> reftex.el ** Changes in BibTeX mode. *** Info documentation is now available. *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode. *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to bibtex-user-optional-fields. *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead). *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by appropriate functions. *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h. *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has been cleaned. *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter. *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries shall be delimited. *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and bibtex-include-OPTkey for details. *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are prefixed with `ALT'. *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable documentation). *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too. *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if comma should be inserted at end of last field. *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation). *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries. *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer. *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database from alien sources. *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string) to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in crossref entries. *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or region. *** Added support for imenu. *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g. `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors. *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files from `bibtex-string-files' are searched. ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative. ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem. Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory as an argument. When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed). ** browse-url changes *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm), Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated customization variables. *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'. *** URLs marked up with (RFC1738) work if broken across lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'. ** Changes in Ediff *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel pops up the Info file for this command. *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different directories). *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of files in the same directory. *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively. The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug related to the GNU format has now been fixed.) ** Changes in Viper *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper- instead of vip-. *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states. *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before. *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states. *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state. *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor color when Viper is in insert state. *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window, Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior. ** Etags changes. *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average. Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on. *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags. *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements" constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java. *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax). In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash. *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories, methods and protocols. *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a paragraph name. *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression at least M times and as many as N times. ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert in files has changed slightly. With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string, time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it. This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility with old time-stamp-format values. In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character. This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility reasons. In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d". Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway. The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being recommended now will continue to work then. See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for details. ** There are some additional major modes: dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files. m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input. meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files. ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell into Emacs. ** New Lisp packages include: *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops. *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might be used for adding some indecent words to your email. *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor. *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes in shell buffers. *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code. See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer' and `elint-defun'. *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within strings or comments. These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev, you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text at these points. *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you can visit them by short forms of their names. *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded Emacs Lisp function at point. *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture. *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way. *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning. *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program. *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input. *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed. *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature. You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its original place after inserting the copy. *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2 on the buffer. You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed. Enable mouse-drag with: (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw) -or- (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag) *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail. *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave. It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess. *** ogonek The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for instance) and vice versa. To use this package load it using M-x load-library [enter] ogonek Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish M-x ogonek-how -- in English The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the ways of customization in `.emacs'. *** Interface to ph. Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi) The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to these servers. *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email. *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature. You can move the virtual cursor with special commands while the real cursor does not move. *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up for visiting your favorite web sites. *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations, so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used. ** movemail change Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server. This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before. * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows. ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files. Emacs handles three different conventions for representing end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention. To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos. * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20. ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed to start with w32- instead of win32-. In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it "win". ** Basic Lisp changes *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant. *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program or by the user. The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed. *** There are new macros `when' and `unless' (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...)) (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...) *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of its argument. *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties. *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function. *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors. *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the `format' function. *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc. *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on adding one of these suffixes. *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE which specifies the base to use when converting an integer. If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used. We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers, because that would be much more work and does not seem useful. *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings. *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally. You must load the `cl' library to define it. *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this: (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...) BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use. BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer. *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer' works using `save-current-buffer'. *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value of the last form. *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer, which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string) as the last form. *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the matches. For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose"). *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string. Then it returns that string. For example, if the current buffer name is `foo', (with-output-to-string (princ "The buffer is ") (princ (buffer-name))) returns "The buffer is foo". ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil. These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte characters that occupy several buffer positions each. *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four). Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements; character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes. Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))). ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always. Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte characters". The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is. *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a character, which may be more than one buffer position. This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is always one buffer position, need to be changed. However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position. *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters, because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However, the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters, guaranteed. *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a character). When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS: 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range, 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form, 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form, 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form, 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character. *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses. *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be more than the number of characters. You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape, \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape. *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters and returns a string containing those characters. *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string. (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a character, sref signals an error. *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes). *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes). *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string to a vector of the characters in it. *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents of a string. You call it as follows: (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ) This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string. This function really does alter the contents of STRING. Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string, it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length. *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR, if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window. *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING, if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window. *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary, to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string which contains all or just part of the existing string.) (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING) This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN. The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column. If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string are not included in the resulting value. The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING. If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one character extends across that column), then the padding character PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at column START-COLUMN. *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called, the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the changed text, before the change. *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is one character set for each script, not for each language. **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name. **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names. **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.) **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values which identify the character within that character set. **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the opposite of split-char. **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets of all the characters between BEG and END. **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets of all the characters in a string. *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems and specifying coding systems. **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants. (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well as what to do about code conversion.) **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system name. It returns t if so, nil if not. **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist, except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name. Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp to match against a file name. VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr specifies the coding system for encoding. If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above. **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies the coding system to use for network sockets. Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be either a port number or a regular expression matching some network service names. VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr specifies the coding system for encoding. If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above. **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist, except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to start the subprocess. **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output, when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it. **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous subprocess. It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection, but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or connection permanently or until overridden. The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil. It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding system for one operation at a time. **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from files, subprocesses or network connections. **** The function process-coding-system tells you what coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using. The value is a cons cell, (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM) where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding input to the subprocess. **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess. ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility, you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom. You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of information (usually): the "type" which says what values are legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for customization. Thus, instead of writing (defvar foo-blurgoze nil "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.") you would now write this: (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely." :type 'boolean :group foo) The type `boolean' means that this variable has only two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom for a description of them. The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option should belong to. You define a new group like this: (defgroup ispell nil "Spell checking using Ispell." :group 'processes) The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself, but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages. Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple package should have just one group; a more complex package should have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword" first-level subgroups. ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers. This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a separate manual that accompanies Emacs. ** easy-mmode The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles, predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also `easy-mmode-define-keymap'. ** Text property changes *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a text property. *** The new functions next-char-property-change and previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan. If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the position of the beginning or end of the buffer. *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This is an alternative to using the keymap itself. ** Changes in invisibility features *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should make the overlay visible. During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and t when it should hide it. *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol) and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol. Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'. Here is an example of how to do this: ;; If we want to display an ellipsis: (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t)) ;; If you don't want ellipsis: (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol) ... (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol) ... ;; When done with the overlays: (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t)) ;; Or respectively: (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol) ** Changes in syntax parsing. *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil. If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always used to determine the syntax of the character at the position. When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a character in the buffer is calculated thus: a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type; Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e., a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR). b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property is a syntax table, this syntax table is used (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to determine the syntax type of the character. c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table of the current buffer. *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions. *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table' text property. *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string. *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp' (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth element: the character address of the start of last comment or string; nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code. *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'. ** Changes in face features *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces. *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one). *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold. set-face-bold-p sets that flag. *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic. set-face-italic-p sets that flag. *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME) and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in the `face' property (either the character's text property or an overlay property). This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use arbitrary colors in a Lisp package. ** Changes in file-handling functions *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words, they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion is now done only in substitute-in-file-name. This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name begins with ~. *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file, it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error. *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers. *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file, as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil. *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses character code conversion as well as other things. Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names (formerly it did not). *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR environment variable to decide which directory to put them in. *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps instead of constant strings. *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through. substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially, in the same way as before. *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now. The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion. *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing else, and returns nil. *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified directory cannot be listed. ** Changes in minibuffer input *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an additional argument which specifies the default value. If this argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two ways: It is returned if the user enters empty input. It is available through the history command M-n. *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer, read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer. In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an argument in this way. *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil. ** Echo area features *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active after the echo area is cleared. *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed in the echo area, or nil if there is none. ** Keyboard input features *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started. *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated by keyboard macros. ** Frame-related changes *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg. *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run. *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed in the selected frame. *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies which side of the window to put the scroll bars on. ** X Windows features *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs. *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work. The menu displays the current status of the box or button. *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return. A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster. If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern, it is good to supply 1 for this argument. ** Subprocess features *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this automatically. *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command and returns the output from the command as a string. *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process, and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection. ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before. ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it goes after the other menu items. ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks are in use. The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a series of several changes--if that seems safe. Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls form. ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense, but its hook is still run. ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it) for errors that are handled by condition-case. If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case. This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't warned. ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own way for Emacs to "ring the bell". ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for functions like display-time. ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before. ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit. ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code if there is an error in compilation. ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil, they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list. ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty, Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing the *scratch* buffer. ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string. The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important, e.g., in Font Lock mode. ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer, and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window. It starts at 0 when the buffer is created. ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window and compose-mail-other-frame. ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The full name of the specified user will be returned. ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization files at all. ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros. For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that is how %S normally pads to two positions. ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url. ** imenu.el changes. You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an item from menu created by imenu. An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we select one of those items. * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes. * Changes in Emacs 19.33. ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major mode should do that--it is the user's choice.) ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on. Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works. * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error. To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f. ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps. ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame. When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same as in previous Emacs versions. ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple frames. ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu. This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by accident. ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region. It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that line and then executing the macro. This command is not new, but was never documented before. ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting characters. ** Font Lock mode *** Font Lock support modes Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when Font Lock mode is enabled. For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put: (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode) in your ~/.emacs. *** lazy-lock The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time. To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs: (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode) To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'. ** Changes in BibTeX mode. *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or paren and key. *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now supported. ** Gnus changes. Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new commands and variables have been added. There should be no significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the previously released version, except in the message composition area. Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive. *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now obsolete. *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where missing articles are represented by empty nodes. (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some) *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server. To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil) *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are referred. *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions: (setq gnus-use-grouplens t) *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed. (setq gnus-use-trees t) *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary buffers. (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode) *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode: `M-x gnus-binary-mode' *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy. (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode) *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail. Use the `S D r' and `S D b'. *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency is possible. (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group) *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on groups of groups. *** Caching is possible in virtual groups. *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else. *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets. *** The Gnus cache is much faster. *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria. For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank) *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and expiration times. *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used. *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on process marked articles on the `M P' submap. *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been bound to keys on the `/' submap. *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving articles with the `*' command. *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles. *** Article headers can be buttonized. (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head) *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID. *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable. *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article buffer. *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'. *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process. *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam. (setq gnus-use-nocem t) *** Groups can be made permanently visible. (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:") *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier. *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header. *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header. (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references) *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid refetching. (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50) *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate buffer to allow easier treatment. *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'. *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving. (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t) *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching articles. (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view) *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text. *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much cited text to hide is now customizable. (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2) *** Boring headers can be hidden. (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers) *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar. *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added. The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features in greater detail. * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already exists. ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors, as well as lists. ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap of a given keymap. ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a keymap or nil. ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real" name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the alias. * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States. Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act. This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited. For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site `http://www.vtw.org/'. ** A note about C mode indentation customization. The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode. It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs chapter of the manual for details. However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old customization variables take effect. ** Marking with the mouse. When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are using M-x transient-mark-mode. ** Improved Windows NT/95 support. *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95. *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used to work on NT only and not on 95.) *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS applications, these problems are significant. If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy. However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any other DOS application as a subprocess. Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess. You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess. If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy. Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes. ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode. This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the minibuffer contains. ** `title' frame parameter and resource. The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else. It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources. It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise affects just the displayed title of the frame. The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do: it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources, and also serves as the default for the displayed title when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil. ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer). ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif. If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12: Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : ShiftF12 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases to replace the characters it "deletes". ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message. ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it, select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command. It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message immediately after the selected one. This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs. ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory. Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover. If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x recover-session. You can turn off the writing of these files by setting auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session will not work. Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so now that the bug is fixed. ** Changes to Version Control (VC) There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do when you visit a link to a file that is under version control. Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system, which is dangerous and probably not what you want. If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file, telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default), VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil, the link is visited and a warning displayed. ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language. Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters). There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they enable only the accent characters needed for particular language. The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language, remain normal. ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...). Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since Followup-To usually just holds one of those. Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and `mail-directory-stream'.) ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured) skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s. Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results). The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit / Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable. Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due to a limitation in font-lock). External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving. ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in this example: (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index"))) ** Changes in BibTeX mode. *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores. *** Font Lock mode is now supported. *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive. *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it. The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil. *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q does the same job. *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author = "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported. *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help text. ** Font Lock mode *** Global Font Lock mode Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned on globally where the buffer mode supports it. For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put: (global-font-lock-mode t) in your ~/.emacs. *** Local Refontification In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only. However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines, those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block). In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function. (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines above and below point. With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point. ** Follow mode Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window, split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x follow-mode. M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled. To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split. ** hide-show changes. The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for normal hooks. ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands. The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q. ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are those that begin a function, record, or macro. ** MSDOS Changes *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP. Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works. *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs. *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak. *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously pressing both mouse buttons. *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones are: **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package) now works. **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode). **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new implementation of Emacs timers, see below). **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards. **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms. **** `M-x recover-session' works. **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors. **** The `TPU-EDT' package works. * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31. ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it. ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values. The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux', not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type' need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also be different. It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather than `system-type'. See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this. ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them. ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers that pointed into or next to the deleted text. ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more reliably and can be used for shorter time delays. The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks like this: (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...) SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS. REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once. *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give up if too much time passes. (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...) This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds. If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last form in BODY. *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A call looks like this: (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...) SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS. Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse command. REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after each time Emacs becomes idle. If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is idle for SECS seconds. *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers instead. *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if there is no answer within a certain time. (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE) asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave. Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE. ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the arguments in between are ignored. This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as the list of arguments for `encode-time'. ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs version. It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve. ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating systems with limited file name syntax. Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file completions.el: (defvar save-completions-file-name (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions") "*The filename to save completions to.") This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that depends on the operating system, because the definition of convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system. ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.) ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process marker from its buffer position. ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection. The default is nil, meaning there are no messages. ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger, regardless of the value of debug-on-error. This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting errors that happen often during editing. ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened. ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window. ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc., and not get-buffer-window. ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions, calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them. If you use this feature, you should set the variable buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called over and over for the same text. ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command: ;; @(#) HEADER: text ;; $HEADER: text $ in addition to the normal ;; HEADER: text *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information. * For older news, see the file ONEWS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright information: Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn. Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions, provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last changed them. Local variables: mode: outline paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" end: