comparison etc/NEWS @ 62328:6cec4d45253d

Rearrangements and cleanups.

62327:ab207501967c

+++
*** The mode line position information now comes before the major mode.
When the file is maintained under version control, that information
appears between the position information and the major mode.

*** Easy to overlook single character negation is now font-locked.
You can use the new variable `font-lock-negation-char-face' and the face of
the same name to customize this.  Currently the cc-modes, sh-script-mode,
cperl-mode and make-mode support this.

+++
*** Control characters and escape glyphs are now shown in the new
escape-glyph face.

+++
*** Non-breaking space and hyphens are now prefixed with an escape
character, unless the new user variable `show-nonbreak-escape' is set
to nil.

*** font-lock: in modes like C and Lisp where the fontification assumes that
an open-paren in column 0 is always outside of any string or comment,
font-lock now highlights any such open-paren-in-column-zero in bold-red
if it is inside a string or a comment, to indicate that it can cause
trouble with fontification and/or indentation.

---
*** The default settings for JIT stealth lock parameters are changed.
The default value for the user option jit-lock-stealth-time is now 16
instead of 3, and the default value of jit-lock-stealth-nice is now

to a printable string.  For example, an IP address A.B.C.D and port
number P is represented as a five element vector [A B C D P], and the
printable string returned for this vector is "A.B.C.D:P".  See the doc
string for other formatting options.

*** By default, the function process-contact still returns (HOST SERVICE)
for a network process.  Using the new optional KEY arg, the complete list
of network process properties or a specific property can be selected.

Using :local and :remote as the KEY, the address of the local or
remote end-point is returned.  An Inet address is represented as a 5
element vector, where the first 4 elements contain the IP address and
the fifth is the port number.

*** Network processes can now be stopped and restarted with
`stop-process' and `continue-process'.  For a server process, no
connections are accepted in the stopped state.  For a client process,
no input is received in the stopped state.

*** New function network-interface-list.

This function returns a list of network interface names and their
current network addresses.

*** New function network-interface-info.

This function returns the network address, hardware address, current
status, and other information about a specific network interface.

*** The sentinel is now called when a network process is deleted with
delete-process.  The status message passed to the sentinel for a
deleted network process is "deleted".  The message passed to the
sentinel when the connection is closed by the remote peer has been
changed to "connection broken by remote peer".

** Using window objects:

+++
*** New function `window-body-height'.

header line.

+++
*** New function `window-body-height'.

This is like window-height but does not count the mode line
or the header line.

+++
*** You can now make a window as short as one line.

+++
*** The new macro `with-selected-window' temporarily switches the
selected window without impacting the order of `buffer-list'.

+++
*** `select-window' takes an optional second argument `norecord'.

This is like `switch-to-buffer'.

+++
*** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window

identifing the bitmap such as `left-truncation or `continued-line'.

*** New function `destroy-fringe-bitmap' deletes a fringe bitmap
or restores a built-in one to its default value.

*** New function `set-fringe-bitmap-face' can now be used to set a
specific face to be used for a specific fringe bitmap.  The face is
automatically merged with the `fringe' face, so normally, the face
should only specify the foreground color of the bitmap.

*** There are new display properties, `left-fringe; and `right-fringe',
that can be used to show a specific bitmap in the left or right fringe
bitmap of the display line.

Format is `display (left-fringe BITMAP [FACE])', where BITMAP is a
symbol identifying a fringe bitmap, either built-in or defined with

If the `line-spacing' property is a float or cons, the line spacing
is calculated as specified above for the `line-height' property.

+++
*** The buffer local line-spacing variable can now have a float value,
which is used as a height relative to the default frame line height.

+++
*** Enhancements to stretch display properties

For example, to align to the center of the left-margin, use
    :align-to (+ left-margin (0.5 . left-margin))

If no specific base offset is set for alignment, it is always relative
to the left edge of the text area.  For example, :align-to 0 in a
header-line aligns with the first text column in the text area.

The value of the form `(NUM . EXPR)' is the value of NUM multiplied by
the value of the expression EXPR.  For example, (2 . in) specifies a
width of 2 inches, while (0.5 . IMAGE) specifies half the width (or
height) of the specified image.

*** Support for displaying image slices

**** New display property (slice X Y WIDTH HEIGHT) can be used with
an image property to display only a specific slice of the image.

**** Function insert-image has new optional fourth arg to
specify image slice (X Y WIDTH HEIGHT).

**** New function insert-sliced-image inserts a given image as a
specified number of evenly sized slices (rows x columns).

+++
*** Images can now have an associated image map via the :map property.

When the mouse pointer is above a hot-spot area of an image, the
PLIST of that hot-spot is consulted; if it contains a `help-echo'
property it defines a tool-tip for the hot-spot, and if it contains
a `pointer' property, it defines the shape of the mouse cursor when
it is over the hot-spot.  See the variable 'void-area-text-pointer'
for possible pointer shapes.

When you click the mouse when the mouse pointer is over a hot-spot,
an event is composed by combining the ID of the hot-spot with the
mouse event, e.g. [area4 mouse-1] if the hot-spot's ID is `area4'.

controlled/overriden via the `pointer' text property.

** Mouse event enhancements:

+++
*** Mouse clicks on fringes now generates left-fringe or right-fringes
events, rather than a text area click event.

+++
*** Mouse clicks in the left and right marginal areas now includes a
sensible buffer position corresponding to the first character in the
corresponding text row.

+++
*** Function `mouse-set-point' now works for events outside text area.

+++
*** Mouse events now includes buffer position for all event types.

+++
*** `posn-point' now returns buffer position for non-text area events.

+++
*** New function `posn-area' returns window area clicked on (nil means
text area).

+++
*** Mouse events include actual glyph column and row for all event types.

+++
*** New function `posn-actual-col-row' returns actual glyph coordinates.

+++
*** Mouse events can now include image object in addition to string object.

+++
*** Mouse events include relative x and y pixel coordinates relative to
the top left corner of the object (image or character) clicked on.

+++
*** Mouse events include the pixel width and height of the object
(image or character) clicked on.

+++
*** New functions 'posn-object', 'posn-object-x-y', and
'posn-object-width-height' return the image or string object of a mouse
click, the x and y pixel coordinates relative to the top left corner
of that object, and the total width and height of that object.

** Text property and overlay changes:

+++
*** Arguments for remove-overlays are now optional, so that you can
remove all overlays in the buffer by just calling (remove-overlays).

+++
*** New variable char-property-alias-alist.

This variable allows you to create alternative names for text
properties.  It works at the same level as `default-text-properties',
although it applies to overlays as well.  This variable was introduced
to implement the `font-lock-face' property.

return value of `get-char-property' called with those arguments and
whose cdr is the overlay in which the property was found, or nil if
it was found as a text property or not found at all.

+++
*** The new function remove-list-of-text-properties is almost the same
as `remove-text-properties'.  The only difference is that it takes a
list of property names as argument rather than a property list.

** Face changes

+++
*** The new face attribute condition `min-colors' can be used to tailor

look best on a terminal that supports at least this many colors.  This
is now the preferred method for defining default faces in a way that
makes a good use of the capabilities of the display.

+++
*** New function display-supports-face-attributes-p can be used to test
whether a given set of face attributes is actually displayable.

A new predicate `supports' has also been added to the `defface' face
specification language, which can be used to do this test for faces
defined with defface.

---
*** The special treatment of faces whose names are of the form `fg:COLOR'
or `bg:COLOR' has been removed.  Lisp programs should use the
`defface' facility for defining faces with specific colors, or use

*** The function `face-differs-from-default-p' now truly checks
whether the given face displays differently from the default face or
not (previously it did only a very cursory check).

+++
*** `face-attribute', `face-foreground', `face-background', and
`face-stipple' now accept a new optional argument, INHERIT, which
controls how face inheritance is used when determining the value of a
face attribute.

+++
*** New functions `face-attribute-relative-p' and `merge-face-attribute'
help with handling relative face attributes.

faces in the list override later faces in the list; in previous
releases of Emacs, the order was the opposite.  This change was made
so that :inherit face lists operate identically to face lists in text
`face' properties.

+++
*** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'.

---
*** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on
the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil..

** Font-Lock changes:

new variable `char-property-alias-alist'.

+++
*** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'.

*** the FACENAME returned in `font-lock-keywords' can be a list of the
form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP2 VAL2 ...) so you can set other
properties than `face'.

*** `font-lock-extra-managed-props' can be set to make sure those
extra properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock.

---
*** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'.

precedence over the file name.  Likewise an `<?xml' or `<!DOCTYPE'
declaration will give the buffer XML or SGML mode, based on the new
var `magic-mode-alist'.

+++
*** Major mode functions now run the new normal hook
`after-change-major-mode-hook', at their very end, after the mode hooks.

---
*** If a major mode function has a non-nil `no-clone-indirect'
property, `clone-indirect-buffer' signals an error if you use
it in that buffer.

and simply passes them to `defcustom', if applicable.

+++
*** `minor-mode-list' now holds a list of minor mode commands.

---
*** `define-global-minor-mode'.

This is a new name for what was formerly called
`easy-mmode-define-global-mode'.  The old name remains as an alias.

** Command loop changes:

+++
*** The new function `called-interactively-p' does what many people
have mistakenly believed `interactive-p' did: it returns t if the
calling function was called through `call-interactively'.  This should
only be used when you cannot solve the problem by adding a new
INTERACTIVE argument to the command.

+++
*** The function `commandp' takes an additional optional argument.

+++
*** `load-history' now records (defun . FUNNAME) when a function is
defined.  For a variable, it records just the variable name.

+++
*** The function symbol-file can now search specifically for function or
variable definitions.

+++
*** `provide' and `featurep' now accept an optional second argument
to test/provide subfeatures.  Also `provide' now checks `after-load-alist'
and runs any code associated with the provided feature.

than 3 levels of nesting.

+++
** Byte compiler changes:

*** The byte-compiler now displays the actual line and character
position of errors, where possible.  Additionally, the form of its
warning and error messages have been brought more in line with the
output of other GNU tools.

*** The new macro `with-no-warnings' suppresses all compiler warnings
inside its body.  In terms of execution, it is equivalent to `progn'.

*** You can avoid warnings for possibly-undefined symbols with a

3. For binary files where format conversion would be pointless and
wasteful.

---
*** set-buffer-file-coding-system now takes an additional argument,
NOMODIFY.  If it is non-nil, it means don't mark the buffer modified.

+++
*** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions
to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system

---
*** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access
hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'.

---
*** New function quail-find-key returns a list of keys to type in the
current input method to input a character.

** Mode line changes:

+++
*** New function `format-mode-line'.

This returns the mode-line or header-line of the selected (or a
specified) window as a string with or without text properties.

+++
*** The new mode-line construct `(:propertize ELT PROPS...)' can be
used to add text properties to mode-line elements.

** Miscellaneous:

+++
*** A number of hooks have been renamed to better follow the conventions:

find-file-hooks to find-file-hook,
find-file-not-found-hooks to find-file-not-found-functions,
write-file-hooks to write-file-functions,
write-contents-hooks to write-contents-functions,
x-lost-selection-hooks to x-lost-selection-functions,
x-sent-selection-hooks to x-sent-selection-functions,
delete-frame-hook to delete-frame-functions.

In each case the old name remains as an alias for the moment.

+++
*** local-write-file-hooks is marked obsolete

62328:6cec4d45253d

+++
*** The mode line position information now comes before the major mode.
When the file is maintained under version control, that information
appears between the position information and the major mode.

+++
*** New face `escape-glyph' highlights control characters and escape glyphs.

+++
*** Non-breaking space and hyphens are now prefixed with an escape
character, unless the new user variable `show-nonbreak-escape' is set
to nil.

*** font-lock: in modes like C and Lisp where the fontification assumes that
an open-paren in column 0 is always outside of any string or comment,
font-lock now highlights any such open-paren-in-column-zero in bold-red
if it is inside a string or a comment, to indicate that it can cause
trouble with fontification and/or indentation.

+++
*** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'.

*** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-comment-delimiter-face'.

*** Easy to overlook single character negation is now font-locked.
You can use the new variable `font-lock-negation-char-face' and the face of
the same name to customize this.  Currently the cc-modes, sh-script-mode,
cperl-mode and make-mode support this.

---
*** The default settings for JIT stealth lock parameters are changed.
The default value for the user option jit-lock-stealth-time is now 16
instead of 3, and the default value of jit-lock-stealth-nice is now

to a printable string.  For example, an IP address A.B.C.D and port
number P is represented as a five element vector [A B C D P], and the
printable string returned for this vector is "A.B.C.D:P".  See the doc
string for other formatting options.

*** `process-contact' has an optional KEY argument.

Depending on this argument, you can get the complete list of network
process properties or a specific property.  Using :local or :remote as
the KEY, you get the address of the local or remote end-point.

An Inet address is represented as a 5 element vector, where the first
4 elements contain the IP address and the fifth is the port number.

*** New functions `stop-process' and `continue-process'.

These functions stop and restart communication through a network
connection.  For a server process, no connections are accepted in the
stopped state.  For a client process, no input is received in the
stopped state.

*** New function `network-interface-list'.

This function returns a list of network interface names and their
current network addresses.

*** New function `network-interface-info'.

This function returns the network address, hardware address, current
status, and other information about a specific network interface.

*** Deleting a network process with `delete-process' calls the sentinel.

The status message passed to the sentinel for a deleted network
process is "deleted".  The message passed to the sentinel when the
connection is closed by the remote peer has been changed to
"connection broken by remote peer".

** Using window objects:

+++
*** New function `window-body-height'.

header line.

+++
*** New function `window-body-height'.

This is like `window-height' but does not count the mode line
or the header line.

+++
*** You can now make a window as short as one line.

+++
*** The new macro `with-selected-window' temporarily switches the
selected window without impacting the order of `buffer-list'.

+++
*** `select-window' takes an optional second argument NORECORD.

This is like `switch-to-buffer'.

+++
*** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window

identifing the bitmap such as `left-truncation or `continued-line'.

*** New function `destroy-fringe-bitmap' deletes a fringe bitmap
or restores a built-in one to its default value.

*** New function `set-fringe-bitmap-face' specifies the face to be
used for a specific fringe bitmap.  The face is automatically merged
with the `fringe' face, so normally, the face should only specify the
foreground color of the bitmap.

*** There are new display properties, `left-fringe' and `right-fringe',
that can be used to show a specific bitmap in the left or right fringe
bitmap of the display line.

Format is `display (left-fringe BITMAP [FACE])', where BITMAP is a
symbol identifying a fringe bitmap, either built-in or defined with

If the `line-spacing' property is a float or cons, the line spacing
is calculated as specified above for the `line-height' property.

+++
*** The buffer local `line-spacing' variable can now have a float value,
which is used as a height relative to the default frame line height.

+++
*** Enhancements to stretch display properties

For example, to align to the center of the left-margin, use
    :align-to (+ left-margin (0.5 . left-margin))

If no specific base offset is set for alignment, it is always relative
to the left edge of the text area.  For example, :align-to 0 in a
header line aligns with the first text column in the text area.

The value of the form `(NUM . EXPR)' is the value of NUM multiplied by
the value of the expression EXPR.  For example, (2 . in) specifies a
width of 2 inches, while (0.5 . IMAGE) specifies half the width (or
height) of the specified image.

*** Support for displaying image slices

**** New display property (slice X Y WIDTH HEIGHT) can be used with
an image property to display only a specific slice of the image.

**** Function `insert-image' has new optional fourth arg to
specify image slice (X Y WIDTH HEIGHT).

**** New function `insert-sliced-image' inserts a given image as a
specified number of evenly sized slices (rows x columns).

+++
*** Images can now have an associated image map via the :map property.

When the mouse pointer is above a hot-spot area of an image, the
PLIST of that hot-spot is consulted; if it contains a `help-echo'
property it defines a tool-tip for the hot-spot, and if it contains
a `pointer' property, it defines the shape of the mouse cursor when
it is over the hot-spot.  See the variable `void-area-text-pointer'
for possible pointer shapes.

When you click the mouse when the mouse pointer is over a hot-spot,
an event is composed by combining the ID of the hot-spot with the
mouse event, e.g. [area4 mouse-1] if the hot-spot's ID is `area4'.

controlled/overriden via the `pointer' text property.

** Mouse event enhancements:

+++
*** Mouse events for clicks on window fringes now specify `left-fringe'
or `right-fringe' as the area.

+++
*** All mouse events now include a buffer position regardless of where
you clicked.  For mouse clicks in window margins and fringes, this is
a sensible buffer position corresponding to the surrounding text.

+++
*** `posn-point' now returns buffer position for non-text area events.

+++
*** Function `mouse-set-point' now works for events outside text area.

+++
*** New function `posn-area' returns window area clicked on (nil means
text area).

+++
*** Mouse events include actual glyph column and row for all event types
and all areas.

+++
*** New function `posn-actual-col-row' returns the actual glyph coordinates
of the mouse event position.

+++
*** Mouse events can now indicate an image object clicked on.

+++
*** Mouse events include relative X and Y pixel coordinates relative to
the top left corner of the object (image or character) clicked on.

+++
*** Mouse events include the pixel width and height of the object
(image or character) clicked on.

+++
*** New functions 'posn-object', 'posn-object-x-y', 'posn-object-width-height'.

These return the image or string object of a mouse click, the X and Y
pixel coordinates relative to the top left corner of that object, and
the total width and height of that object.

** Text property and overlay changes:

+++
*** Arguments for `remove-overlays' are now optional, so that you can
remove all overlays in the buffer with just (remove-overlays).

+++
*** New variable `char-property-alias-alist'.

This variable allows you to create alternative names for text
properties.  It works at the same level as `default-text-properties',
although it applies to overlays as well.  This variable was introduced
to implement the `font-lock-face' property.

return value of `get-char-property' called with those arguments and
whose cdr is the overlay in which the property was found, or nil if
it was found as a text property or not found at all.

+++
*** The new function `remove-list-of-text-properties'.

It is like `remove-text-properties' except that it takes a list of
property names as argument rather than a property list.

** Face changes

+++
*** The new face attribute condition `min-colors' can be used to tailor

look best on a terminal that supports at least this many colors.  This
is now the preferred method for defining default faces in a way that
makes a good use of the capabilities of the display.

+++
*** New function `display-supports-face-attributes-p' can be used to test
whether a given set of face attributes is actually displayable.

A new predicate `supports' has also been added to the `defface' face
specification language, which can be used to do this test for faces
defined with `defface'.

---
*** The special treatment of faces whose names are of the form `fg:COLOR'
or `bg:COLOR' has been removed.  Lisp programs should use the
`defface' facility for defining faces with specific colors, or use

*** The function `face-differs-from-default-p' now truly checks
whether the given face displays differently from the default face or
not (previously it did only a very cursory check).

+++
*** `face-attribute', `face-foreground', `face-background', `face-stipple'.

These now accept a new optional argument, INHERIT, which controls how
face inheritance is used when determining the value of a face
attribute.

+++
*** New functions `face-attribute-relative-p' and `merge-face-attribute'
help with handling relative face attributes.

faces in the list override later faces in the list; in previous
releases of Emacs, the order was the opposite.  This change was made
so that :inherit face lists operate identically to face lists in text
`face' properties.

---
*** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on
the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil..

** Font-Lock changes:

new variable `char-property-alias-alist'.

+++
*** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'.

**** the FACENAME returned in `font-lock-keywords' can be a list of the
form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP2 VAL2 ...) so you can set other
properties than `face'.

**** `font-lock-extra-managed-props' can be set to make sure those
extra properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock.

---
*** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'.

precedence over the file name.  Likewise an `<?xml' or `<!DOCTYPE'
declaration will give the buffer XML or SGML mode, based on the new
var `magic-mode-alist'.

+++
*** Use the new function `run-mode-hooks' to run the major mode's mode hook.

+++
*** All major mode functions should now run the new normal hook
`after-change-major-mode-hook', at their very end, after the mode
hooks.  `run-mode-hooks' does this automatically.

---
*** If a major mode function has a non-nil `no-clone-indirect'
property, `clone-indirect-buffer' signals an error if you use
it in that buffer.

and simply passes them to `defcustom', if applicable.

+++
*** `minor-mode-list' now holds a list of minor mode commands.

+++
*** `define-global-minor-mode'.

This is a new name for what was formerly called
`easy-mmode-define-global-mode'.  The old name remains as an alias.

** Command loop changes:

+++
*** The new function `called-interactively-p' does what many people
have mistakenly believed `interactive-p' to do: it returns t if the
calling function was called through `call-interactively'.

Only use this when you cannot solve the problem by adding a new
INTERACTIVE argument to the command.

+++
*** The function `commandp' takes an additional optional argument.

+++
*** `load-history' now records (defun . FUNNAME) when a function is
defined.  For a variable, it records just the variable name.

+++
*** The function `symbol-file' can now search specifically for function,
variable or face definitions.

+++
*** `provide' and `featurep' now accept an optional second argument
to test/provide subfeatures.  Also `provide' now checks `after-load-alist'
and runs any code associated with the provided feature.

than 3 levels of nesting.

+++
** Byte compiler changes:

*** The byte compiler now displays the actual line and character
position of errors, where possible.  Additionally, the form of its
warning and error messages have been brought into line with GNU standards
for these.  As a result, you can use next-error and friends on the
compilation output buffer.

*** The new macro `with-no-warnings' suppresses all compiler warnings
inside its body.  In terms of execution, it is equivalent to `progn'.

*** You can avoid warnings for possibly-undefined symbols with a

3. For binary files where format conversion would be pointless and
wasteful.

---
*** `set-buffer-file-coding-system' now takes an additional argument,
NOMODIFY.  If it is non-nil, it means don't mark the buffer modified.

+++
*** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions
to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system

---
*** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access
hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'.

---
*** New function `quail-find-key' returns a list of keys to type in the
current input method to input a character.

** Mode line changes:

+++
*** New function `format-mode-line'.

This returns the mode line or header line of the selected (or a
specified) window as a string with or without text properties.

+++
*** The new mode-line construct `(:propertize ELT PROPS...)' can be
used to add text properties to mode-line elements.

** Miscellaneous:

+++
*** A number of hooks have been renamed to better follow the conventions:

`find-file-hooks' to `find-file-hook',
`find-file-not-found-hooks' to `find-file-not-found-functions',
`write-file-hooks' to `write-file-functions',
`write-contents-hooks' to `write-contents-functions',
`x-lost-selection-hooks' to `x-lost-selection-functions',
`x-sent-selection-hooks' to `x-sent-selection-functions',
`delete-frame-hook' to `delete-frame-functions'.

In each case the old name remains as an alias for the moment.

+++
*** local-write-file-hooks is marked obsolete