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annotate man/anti.texi @ 31619:2e04fd5094c1
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author | Andrew Innes <andrewi@gnu.org> |
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date | Thu, 14 Sep 2000 21:19:58 +0000 |
parents | 736bba059dd4 |
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25829 | 1 @c This is part of the Emacs manual. |
31334 | 2 @c Copyright (C) 1997, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
25829 | 3 @c See file emacs.texi for copying conditions. |
4 | |
5 @node Antinews, MS-DOS, Command Arguments, Top | |
31334 | 6 @appendix Emacs 20 Antinews |
25829 | 7 |
8 For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about | |
31334 | 9 downgrading to Emacs version 20. We hope you will enjoy the greater |
10 simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 21 features. | |
25829 | 11 |
12 @itemize @bullet | |
13 @item | |
31334 | 14 The good, old, vintage Emacs 19 display engine is back, eliminating most |
15 of the unnecessary complications introduced with Emacs 21. To wit: | |
16 | |
17 @itemize @minus | |
18 @item | |
19 Variable-size characters are not supported anymore: you cannot use fonts | |
20 which contain oversized characters, and using italics fonts can totally | |
21 screw up your display. Find one font that works and stick to it! | |
25829 | 22 |
23 @item | |
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24 Likewise, Emacs cannot display images, play sounds, or do anything |
31334 | 25 except displaying text. Multimedia is for Netrape! |
25829 | 26 |
27 @item | |
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28 Faces on X were made to follow the XLFD font names, to avoid the need of |
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29 reinventing what X has already invented. This means that face merging |
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30 doesn't work. However, experience shows that supporting mergers is bad |
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31 economics. Face inheritance was also removed. |
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32 |
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33 @item |
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34 New face attributes, such as 3D appearence, strike-through, overline |
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35 etc., were eliminated, to minimize consing. |
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36 |
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37 @item |
31334 | 38 Toolkit scrollbars are not supported. Emacs bare-bones X scrollbars are |
39 so much leaner and meaner. There are no toggle buttons and radio | |
40 buttons in menus. @code{LessTif} is not supported either. | |
25829 | 41 |
42 @item | |
31334 | 43 There are no toolbars and no tooltips; in particular, the @acronym{GUD} |
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44 mode cannot display in a tooltip a value of a variable when you click on |
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45 that variable's name. Emacs is an editor, not some fancy GUI program! |
31334 | 46 |
47 @item | |
48 Colors are not available on character terminals. If you @emph{must} | |
49 have colors, but cannot afford running X, use the MS-DOG version of | |
50 Emacs inside a DOS emulator. | |
25829 | 51 |
52 @item | |
31334 | 53 The mode line is no longer mouse-sensitive. You will have to remember |
54 all the necessary commands to switch between buffers, toggle read-only | |
55 and modified status, switch minor modes on and off, etc. | |
25829 | 56 |
57 @item | |
31334 | 58 The support for ``wheeled'' mice on XFree86 has been removed. Go away, |
59 MS-Windows weenies! Busy-cursor display has gone down the drain, too, | |
60 for the same reasons. Meanwhile, the cursor blinking is no longer under | |
61 your control. | |
62 | |
63 @item | |
64 Some aspects of Emacs appearance, such as the colors of the scroll bar | |
65 and the menus, can only be controlled via X resources. Users who aren't | |
66 privy to X arcana, should learn to be happy with the default colors. | |
25829 | 67 |
68 @item | |
31334 | 69 Highlighting of trailing whitespace is not available; you need to move |
70 the cursor into the suspect area to find out whether there is slack | |
71 whitespace there. Empty lines at the end of the buffer cannot be marked | |
72 in any way, either, since each user should know where the buffer ends | |
73 without any help. | |
25829 | 74 |
75 @item | |
31334 | 76 You cannot control the spacing between text lines on the display; you |
77 are now entirely at the mercy of the font designer and the window | |
78 manager. Complain to them if your display looks ugly. | |
79 @end itemize | |
25829 | 80 |
81 @item | |
31334 | 82 Emacs 20 has less elaborate support for multi-lingual editing. While |
83 not as radical as Emacs 19 (which doesn't support anything but | |
84 single-byte European characters), it goes a long way toward eliminating | |
85 some of the annoying features: | |
25829 | 86 |
31334 | 87 @itemize @minus |
25829 | 88 @item |
31334 | 89 Translations of the Emacs reference cards to other languages are gone. |
90 Every Emacs user should know English better than their national | |
91 languages. | |
25829 | 92 |
93 @item | |
31334 | 94 To avoid extra confusion, many language environments have been |
95 eliminated. For example, @samp{Polish} and @samp{Celtic} (Latin-8) | |
96 environments are not supported, and you cannot have the Euro characters, | |
97 since the Latin-9 environment is gone, too. | |
98 | |
99 @item | |
100 Emacs no longer uses the most preferred coding system if it is suitable | |
101 for saving the buffer. Instead, it always prompts you for a coding | |
102 system, so that you get to know its name better. | |
25829 | 103 |
104 @item | |
31334 | 105 Commands which provide detailed information about character sets and |
106 coding systems, such as @code{list-charset-chars}, | |
107 @code{describe-character-set}, and the @kbd{C-u C-x =} key-sequence, no | |
108 longer exist. User feedback suggests that telling too much about | |
109 non-@sc{ascii} characters is confusing and unnecessary. | |
25829 | 110 |
111 @item | |
31334 | 112 The terminal coding system cannot be set to something CCL-based, so |
113 keyboards which produce @code{KOI8} and DOS/Windows codepage codes | |
114 cannot be supported directly. Leim is so much simpler! | |
115 @end itemize | |
25829 | 116 |
117 @item | |
31334 | 118 Systems which are deemed unimportant or still in vaporware phase are no |
119 longer supported: | |
25829 | 120 |
31334 | 121 @itemize @minus |
25829 | 122 @item |
31334 | 123 Emacs cannot be built on GNU/Linux systems running on IA64 machines, |
124 and you cannot build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which | |
125 support 64-bit executables. Thus, Emacs contributes to stability of | |
126 these systems by preventing you from corrupting files larger than 128MB. | |
25829 | 127 |
128 @item | |
31334 | 129 LynxOS is also not supported. |
25829 | 130 @end itemize |
131 | |
31334 | 132 @item |
133 The menu bar is no longer @acronym{CUA}-compliant. We think that | |
134 uniformity of look-and-feel is boring, and that @acronym{CUA} is not | |
135 suitable for Emacs anyway. | |
25829 | 136 |
31334 | 137 @item |
138 You cannot save the options set via the @samp{Options} menu-bar menu; | |
139 instead, you need to set all the options again each time you start a new | |
140 session. This will gradually make your acquaintance with the options | |
141 better and better, until eventually you will be able to set all the | |
142 options without looking at the screen. Unless you start Emacs once and | |
143 never stop it, that is. | |
25829 | 144 |
31334 | 145 @item |
146 Emacs no longer pops up a buffer with error messages when an error is | |
147 signaled during loading of the user's init file. Gurus who can debug | |
148 init files by the seat of their pants will regain their due honor which | |
149 they lost with Emacs 21. | |
25829 | 150 |
151 @item | |
31334 | 152 Many commands duly ignore the active region when Transient Mark mode is |
153 in effect. (Transient Mark mode is alien to Emacs mantra in the first | |
154 place, its introduction was a grave mistake, and we are planning to | |
155 remove it altogether in one of the previous versions; stay tuned.) | |
156 | |
157 @item | |
158 @kbd{C-down-mouse-3} does nothing special when menu bar is not | |
159 displayed. Users who don't like the menu bar should be amply punished | |
160 by forcing them to use the @code{tmm-menubar} replacement, even if they | |
161 do have the mouse. | |
162 | |
163 @item | |
164 The @key{delete} function key produces the same effect as the @key{DEL} | |
165 key, on both TTY and windowed displays. Never again will you be | |
166 confused by this terrible @emph{dichotomy}! | |
167 | |
168 @item | |
169 The ability to save backup files in special subdirectories has been | |
170 eliminated. This makes finding your backup files much easier. | |
171 | |
172 @item | |
173 Emacs no longer refuses to load Lisp files compiled by incompatible | |
174 versions of other Emacsen, which may contain invalid byte-code. | |
175 Instead, Emacs now dumps core when it encounters such byte-code. | |
25829 | 176 |
177 @item | |
31334 | 178 You cannot delete all frames but the current one with @kbd{C-x 5 1}. |
179 Delete them one by one instead. If you have many frames, it's tough on | |
180 you. | |
181 | |
182 @item | |
183 CC Mode is now much harder to customize, due to subtle aspects of local | |
184 and global bindings. In particular, if you change the indentation style | |
185 as appropriate for Java, the indentation in C and C@t{++} buffers is | |
186 messed up, and vice versa. | |
25829 | 187 |
188 @item | |
31334 | 189 Isearch no longer highlights matches besides the current one, and |
190 @kbd{mouse-2} in the echo area during incremental search now signals an | |
191 error, since nobody in their right mind will use a mouse while | |
192 searching. | |
25829 | 193 |
194 @item | |
31334 | 195 You cannot specify a port number with @code{ange-ftp}. Instead, you |
196 need to rely on undocumented features (@emph{use the source, Luke!}) to | |
197 sneak the port in. Time stamps for remote files are not supported, and | |
198 Windows-style ftp clients which output the @samp{^M} character at the | |
199 end of each line wreak havoc with @code{ange-ftp}, making your life more | |
200 interesting. | |
25829 | 201 |
202 @item | |
31334 | 203 Many advanced display features, such as highlighting of mouse-sensitive |
204 text regions and popping up help strings for menu items, don't work in | |
205 the MS-DOS version. Ispell and Eshell don't work on MS-DOS, either. | |
206 MS-DOG users should be aware of their inferiority at all times! | |
25829 | 207 |
208 @item | |
31334 | 209 There's no woman.el package, so Emacs users on non-Posix systems should |
210 learn to read Troff sources of manual pages. This is a Good Thing, | |
211 since Troff is such a nice, intuitive language. | |
25829 | 212 |
213 @item | |
31334 | 214 recentf.el is not available, so you will have to memorize your |
215 frequently edited files by heart, or use desktop.el. | |
25829 | 216 |
217 @item | |
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218 Field properties were eliminated, so various packages based on comint.el |
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219 which run subsidiary programs in Emacs buffers cannot easily distinguish |
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220 between text which came from the subprocess and text typed by the user. |
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221 The ingenious techniques this requires from Lisp programs will |
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222 undoubtfully assist to further advance and development of the Emacs Lisp |
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223 language. |
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224 |
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225 @item |
31334 | 226 Many additional packages that were unnecessarily complicating your lives |
227 are no longer with us. You cannot browse C@t{++} classes with Ebrowse, | |
228 edit Delphi sources, access @acronym{SQL} data bases, edit PostScript | |
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229 files and context diffs, access @acronym{LDAP} and other directory |
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230 servers, edit @file{TODO} files conveniently, or mix shell commands and |
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231 Lisp functions with Eshell. Emacs doesn't need all that crud. |
31334 | 232 |
233 @item | |
234 To keep up with decreasing computer memory capacity and disk space, many | |
235 other functions and files have been eliminated in Emacs 20. There's no | |
236 need to mention them all here. If you try to use one of them, you'll | |
237 get an error message to tell you that it is undefined or unbound. | |
25829 | 238 @end itemize |