comparison etc/NEWS @ 45993:b974df2c611f

*** empty log message ***

45992:3da7c4263b4c

** The commands M-x customize-face and M-x customize-face-other-window
now look at the character after point.  If a face or faces are
specified for that character, the commands by default customize those
faces.

** Limited support for charset unification has been added.
By default, Emacs now knows how to translate latin-N chars between their
charset and some other latin-N charset or unicode.  You can force a
more complete unification by calling (unify-8859-on-decoding-mode 1).

---
** The scrollbar under LessTif or Motif has a smoother drag-scrolling.
On the other hand, the size of the thumb does not represent the actual
amount of text shown any more (only a crude approximation of it).

mouse-autoselect-window to non-nil value, moving the mouse to a different
Emacs window will select that window (minibuffer window can be selected
only when it is active).  The default is nil, so that this feature is not
enabled.

** The new command `describe-char pops up a buffer with description
various information about a character, including its encodings and
syntax, its text properties, overlays, and widgets at point.  You can
get more information about some of them, by clicking on
mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET.

+++
** The new command `multi-occur' is just like `occur', except it can
search multiple buffers.  There is also a new command
`multi-occur-by-filename-regexp' which allows you to specify the

When Emacs is invoked on a window system, the new command-line options
`--fullwidth', `--fullheight', and `--fullscreen' produce a frame
whose width, height, or both width and height take up the entire
screen size.  (For now, this does not work with some window managers.)

** Info-index finally offers completion.

** shell-mode now supports programmable completion using `pcomplete'.

** Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding systems for HTML/XML files
automatically.  This is accomplished using the general mechanism of a
new variable called `auto-coding-functions', which you may add to.  If

** Yanking text now discards certain text properties that can
be inconvenient when you did not expect them.  The variable
`yank-excluded-properties' specifies which ones.  Insertion
of register contents and rectangles also discards these properties.

** Occur, Info, and comint-derived modes now support using
M-x font-lock-mode to toggle fontification.  The variable
`Info-fontify' is no longer applicable; to disable fontification,
remove `turn-on-font-lock' from `Info-mode-hook'.

** The Emacs Lisp 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.

** M-x grep now tries to avoid appending `/dev/null' to the command line
by using GNU grep `-H' option instead.  M-x grep will automatically
detect whether this is possible or not the first time it is invoked.
When `-H' is used, the grep command line supplied by the user is passed
unchanged to the system to execute, which allows more complicated
command lines to be used than was possible before.

** The face-customization widget has been reworked to be less confusing.
In particular, when you enable a face attribute using the corresponding
check-box, there's no longer a redundant `*' option in value selection
for that attribute; the values you can choose are only those which make
sense for the attribute.  When an attribute is de-selected by unchecking

  Minor Improvements

*** Do not allow debugger output history variable to grow without bounds.

** hide-ifdef-mode now uses overlays rather than selective-display
to hide its text.  This should be mostly transparent but slightly
changes the behavior of motion commands line C-e and C-p.

** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded
by whitespace.  This means you can now use them as shell wildcards
too.  If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the
doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent
special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'.

** Dired's v command now runs external viewers to view certain
types of files.  The variable `dired-view-command-alist' controls
what external viewers to use and when.

** Unquoted `$' in file names do not signal an error any more when
the corresponding environment variable does not exist.
Instead, the `$ENVVAR' text is left as is, so that `$$' quoting
is only rarely needed.

** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'.

If this variable is non-nil, its value should be the amount of Emacs
idle time in seconds to wait before starting fontification.  For
example, if you set `jit-lock-defer-time' to 0.25, fontification will

** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a
previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... will cycle through the
mark ring.  Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump.

** In the *Occur* buffer, `o' switches to it in another window, and
C-o displays the current line's occurrence in another window without
switching to it.

** When you specify a frame size with --geometry, the size applies to
all frames you create.  A position specified with --geometry only
affects the initial frame.

+++

paragraphs.

** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name
into the kill ring.

** The variables dired-free-space-program and dired-free-space-args
have been renamed to directory-free-space-program and
directory-free-space-args, and they now apply whenever Emacs puts a
directory listing into a buffer.

** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window
(rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'.

** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on
your current locale settings.  If it turns out that your terminal

automatically at startup, if it exists.  When Emacs offers to save
modified buffers, it saves the abbrevs too if they have changed.  It
can do this either silently or asking for confirmation first,
according to the value of `save-abbrevs'.

** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any)
of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor
appears in.

** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay'
were changed.

** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs
now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.

** The variable `auto-save-file-name-transforms' now has a third element that
controls whether or not the function `make-auto-save-file-name' will
attempt to construct a unique auto-save name (e.g. for remote files).

** VC Changes

*** There is a new user option `vc-cvs-global-switches' that allows
you to specify switches that are passed to any CVS command invoked
by VC.  These switches are used as "global options" for CVS, which
means they are inserted before the command name.  For example, this
allows you to specify a compression level using the "-z#" option for

+++
** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to
--no-window-system.  The old one still works, but is deprecated.

** The command `list-text-properties-at' has been deleted because
C-u C-x = gives the same information and more.

** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin
with a space, if they visit files.

** You can now customize fill-nobreak-predicate to control where
filling can break lines.  We provide two sample predicates,
fill-single-word-nobreak-p and fill-french-nobreak-p.

** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'.
When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry will always
start a new record regardless of when the last record is.

** SGML mode has indentation and supports XML syntax.

By default, its setting is inferred on a buffer-by-buffer basis
from the file name or buffer contents.

** `xml-mode' is now an alias for `smgl-mode', which has XML support.

** New user option `isearch-resume-enabled'.
This option can be disabled, to avoid the normal behaviour of isearch
which puts calls to `isearch-resume' in the command history.

---
** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
instead of using default-major-mode.

---
** Lisp-mode now uses font-lock-doc-face for the docstrings.

** perl-mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'.

** fortran-mode has a new variable `fortran-directive-re'.

** f90-mode has new navigation commands `f90-end-of-block',
`f90-beginning-of-block', `f90-next-block', `f90-previous-block'.

** prolog-mode has a new variable `prolog-font-lock-keywords'
to support use of font-lock.

** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now
understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and
`same-window'.

** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
much pure storage it will approximately need.

** M-x setenv now expands environment variables of the form `$foo' and
`${foo}' in the specified new value of the environment variable.  To
include a `$' in the value, use `$$'.

+++

completing file names.  Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions'
which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion
candidate is a directory.

+++
** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally
displays a buffer menu.  This option turns the buffer menu off.

---
** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer.

** When using M-x revert-buffer in a compilation buffer to rerun a
compilation, it is now made sure that the compilation buffer is reused
in case it has been renamed.

---
** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor.
This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track
the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs.

---
** Some images are now supported on Windows.
PBM and XBM images are supported, other formats which require external
libraries may be supported in future.

** Pointing devices with more than 3 buttons are now supported on MS Windows.
The new variable `w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system' controls
whether Emacs should handle the extra buttons itself (the default), or
pass them to Windows to be handled with system-wide functions.

---
** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available.

---
** A French translation of the Emacs Tutorial is available.

** When emacs is configured to use `xaw3d' scroll-bars, emacs will
tell the scroll-bar library which colors to use for the bevels, to
prevent the library from using dithering.

** New modes and packages

*** The new cua package provides CUA-like keybindings using C-x for
cut (kill), C-c for copy, C-v for paste (yank), and C-z for undo.

Shell connections can be acquired via `rsh', `ssh', `telnet' and also
`su' and `sudo'.

---
** Indentation of simple and extended loop forms has been added to the
cl-indent package.  The new user options
`lisp-loop-keyword-indentation', `lisp-loop-forms-indentation', and
`lisp-simple-loop-indentation' can be used to customize the
indentation of keywords and forms in loop forms.

---
** Indentation of backquoted forms has been made customizable in the
cl-indent package.  See the new user option `lisp-backquote-indentation'.

---
*** The Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp manual is now part of
the distribution.

This manual is now part of the standard distribution and is installed,
together with the Emacs User Manual, into the Info directory.  A menu

mode-lines in inverse-video.


* Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.4

+++
** Renamed file hooks to follow the convention:
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,

** The new function `read-directory-name' can be used instead of
`read-file-name' to read a directory name; when used, completion
will only show directories.

** The New lisp library fringe.el controls the apperance of fringes.

** The `defmacro' form may contain declarations specifying how to
indent the macro in Lisp mode and how to debug it with Edebug.  The
syntax of defmacro has been extended to

number of colors to support, or a symbol.  See the Emacs Lisp
Reference manual for more detailed documentation.

** Mode line display ignores text properties in the value
of a variable whose `risky-local-variables' property is nil.

** Already true in Emacs 21.1, but not emphasized clearly enough:

Multibyte buffers can now faithfully record all 256 character codes
from 0 to 255.  As a result, most of the past reasons to use unibyte

** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1.

** `define-derived-mode' now accepts nil as the parent.

** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in elisp files is now obeyed.

** New functions `keymap-prompt' and `current-active-maps'.

** New function `describe-buffer-bindings'.

45993:b974df2c611f

** The commands M-x customize-face and M-x customize-face-other-window
now look at the character after point.  If a face or faces are
specified for that character, the commands by default customize those
faces.

+++
** Limited support for charset unification has been added.
By default, Emacs now knows how to translate latin-N chars between their
charset and some other latin-N charset or unicode.  You can force a
more complete unification by calling (unify-8859-on-decoding-mode 1).
That maps all the Latin-N character sets into either Latin-1
or Unicode characters.

---
** The scrollbar under LessTif or Motif has a smoother drag-scrolling.
On the other hand, the size of the thumb does not represent the actual
amount of text shown any more (only a crude approximation of it).

mouse-autoselect-window to non-nil value, moving the mouse to a different
Emacs window will select that window (minibuffer window can be selected
only when it is active).  The default is nil, so that this feature is not
enabled.

+++
** The new command `describe-char' (C-u C-x =) pops up a buffer with
description various information about a character, including its
encodings and syntax, its text properties, overlays, and widgets at
point.  You can get more information about some of them, by clicking
on mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET.

+++
** The new command `multi-occur' is just like `occur', except it can
search multiple buffers.  There is also a new command
`multi-occur-by-filename-regexp' which allows you to specify the

When Emacs is invoked on a window system, the new command-line options
`--fullwidth', `--fullheight', and `--fullscreen' produce a frame
whose width, height, or both width and height take up the entire
screen size.  (For now, this does not work with some window managers.)

---
** Info-index offers completion.

---
** shell-mode now supports programmable completion using `pcomplete'.

** Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding systems for HTML/XML files
automatically.  This is accomplished using the general mechanism of a
new variable called `auto-coding-functions', which you may add to.  If

** Yanking text now discards certain text properties that can
be inconvenient when you did not expect them.  The variable
`yank-excluded-properties' specifies which ones.  Insertion
of register contents and rectangles also discards these properties.

+++
** Occur, Info, and comint-derived modes now support using
M-x font-lock-mode to toggle fontification.  The variable
`Info-fontify' is no longer applicable; to disable fontification,
remove `turn-on-font-lock' from `Info-mode-hook'.

+++
** M-x grep now tries to avoid appending `/dev/null' to the command line
by using GNU grep `-H' option instead.  M-x grep will automatically
detect whether this is possible or not the first time it is invoked.
When `-H' is used, the grep command line supplied by the user is passed
unchanged to the system to execute, which allows more complicated
command lines to be used than was possible before.

---
** The face-customization widget has been reworked to be less confusing.
In particular, when you enable a face attribute using the corresponding
check-box, there's no longer a redundant `*' option in value selection
for that attribute; the values you can choose are only those which make
sense for the attribute.  When an attribute is de-selected by unchecking

  Minor Improvements

*** Do not allow debugger output history variable to grow without bounds.

+++
** hide-ifdef-mode now uses overlays rather than selective-display
to hide its text.  This should be mostly transparent but slightly
changes the behavior of motion commands line C-e and C-p.

+++
** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded
by whitespace.  This means you can now use them as shell wildcards
too.  If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the
doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent
special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'.

+++
** Dired's v command now runs external viewers to view certain
types of files.  The variable `dired-view-command-alist' controls
what external viewers to use and when.

+++
** Unquoted `$' in file names do not signal an error any more when
the corresponding environment variable does not exist.
Instead, the `$ENVVAR' text is left as is, so that `$$' quoting
is only rarely needed.

---
** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'.

If this variable is non-nil, its value should be the amount of Emacs
idle time in seconds to wait before starting fontification.  For
example, if you set `jit-lock-defer-time' to 0.25, fontification will

** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a
previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... will cycle through the
mark ring.  Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump.

+++
** In the *Occur* buffer, `o' switches to it in another window, and
C-o displays the current line's occurrence in another window without
switching to it.

+++
** When you specify a frame size with --geometry, the size applies to
all frames you create.  A position specified with --geometry only
affects the initial frame.

+++

paragraphs.

** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name
into the kill ring.

+++
** The variables dired-free-space-program and dired-free-space-args
have been renamed to directory-free-space-program and
directory-free-space-args, and they now apply whenever Emacs puts a
directory listing into a buffer.

---
** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window
(rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'.

** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on
your current locale settings.  If it turns out that your terminal

automatically at startup, if it exists.  When Emacs offers to save
modified buffers, it saves the abbrevs too if they have changed.  It
can do this either silently or asking for confirmation first,
according to the value of `save-abbrevs'.

+++
** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any)
of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor
appears in.

+++
** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay'
were changed.

** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs
now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.

---
** The variable `auto-save-file-name-transforms' now has a third element that
controls whether or not the function `make-auto-save-file-name' will
attempt to construct a unique auto-save name (e.g. for remote files).

** VC Changes

+++
*** There is a new user option `vc-cvs-global-switches' that allows
you to specify switches that are passed to any CVS command invoked
by VC.  These switches are used as "global options" for CVS, which
means they are inserted before the command name.  For example, this
allows you to specify a compression level using the "-z#" option for

+++
** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to
--no-window-system.  The old one still works, but is deprecated.

+++
** The command `list-text-properties-at' has been deleted because
C-u C-x = gives the same information and more.

+++
** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin
with a space, when those buffers are visiting files.  Normally buffers
whose names begin with space are omitted.

** You can now customize fill-nobreak-predicate to control where
filling can break lines.  We provide two sample predicates,
fill-single-word-nobreak-p and fill-french-nobreak-p.

+++
** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'.
When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry will always
start a new record regardless of when the last record is.

** SGML mode has indentation and supports XML syntax.

By default, its setting is inferred on a buffer-by-buffer basis
from the file name or buffer contents.

** `xml-mode' is now an alias for `smgl-mode', which has XML support.

+++
** New user option `isearch-resume-enabled'.
This option can be disabled, to avoid the normal behaviour of isearch
which puts calls to `isearch-resume' in the command history.

---
** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
instead of using default-major-mode.

---
** Lisp mode now uses font-lock-doc-face for the docstrings.

---
** Perl mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'.

** Fortran mode has a new variable `fortran-directive-re'.

---
** F90 mode has new navigation commands `f90-end-of-block',
`f90-beginning-of-block', `f90-next-block', `f90-previous-block'.

---
** Prolog mode has a new variable `prolog-font-lock-keywords'
to support use of font-lock.

+++
** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now
understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and
`same-window'.

+++
** M-x setenv now expands environment variables of the form `$foo' and
`${foo}' in the specified new value of the environment variable.  To
include a `$' in the value, use `$$'.

+++

completing file names.  Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions'
which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion
candidate is a directory.

+++
** Completion commands in the minibuffer apply only to the
text before point.  If there is text in the buffer after point,
it remains unchanged.

+++
** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally
displays a buffer menu.  This option turns the buffer menu off.

---
** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer.

---
** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor.
This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track
the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs.

---
** Some images are now supported on Windows.
PBM and XBM images are supported, other formats which require external
libraries may be supported in future.

---
** Pointing devices with more than 3 buttons are now supported on MS Windows.
The new variable `w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system' controls
whether Emacs should handle the extra buttons itself (the default), or
pass them to Windows to be handled with system-wide functions.

---
** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available.

---
** A French translation of the Emacs Tutorial is available.

** New modes and packages

*** The new cua package provides CUA-like keybindings using C-x for
cut (kill), C-c for copy, C-v for paste (yank), and C-z for undo.

Shell connections can be acquired via `rsh', `ssh', `telnet' and also
`su' and `sudo'.

---
*** The Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp manual is now part of
the distribution.

This manual is now part of the standard distribution and is installed,
together with the Emacs User Manual, into the Info directory.  A menu

mode-lines in inverse-video.


* Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.4

** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
much pure storage it will approximately need.

+++
** Renamed file hooks to follow the convention:
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,

** The new function `read-directory-name' can be used instead of
`read-file-name' to read a directory name; when used, completion
will only show directories.

** The new Lisp library fringe.el controls the apperance of fringes.

** The `defmacro' form may contain declarations specifying how to
indent the macro in Lisp mode and how to debug it with Edebug.  The
syntax of defmacro has been extended to

number of colors to support, or a symbol.  See the Emacs Lisp
Reference manual for more detailed documentation.

** Mode line display ignores text properties in the value
of a variable whose `risky-local-variables' property is nil.

---
** Indentation of simple and extended loop forms has been added to the
cl-indent package.  The new user options
`lisp-loop-keyword-indentation', `lisp-loop-forms-indentation', and
`lisp-simple-loop-indentation' can be used to customize the
indentation of keywords and forms in loop forms.

---
** Indentation of backquoted forms has been made customizable in the
cl-indent package.  See the new user option `lisp-backquote-indentation'.

** Already true in Emacs 21.1, but not emphasized clearly enough:

Multibyte buffers can now faithfully record all 256 character codes
from 0 to 255.  As a result, most of the past reasons to use unibyte

** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1.

** `define-derived-mode' now accepts nil as the parent.

** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in elisp files is now obeyed.

** The Emacs Lisp 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.

** New functions `keymap-prompt' and `current-active-maps'.

** New function `describe-buffer-bindings'.