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view lispref/anti.texi @ 25839:539960b7d9ac
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author | Dave Love <fx@gnu.org> |
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date | Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:13:07 +0000 |
parents | 467b88fab665 |
children | 6a17c48b52ef |
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@c -*-texinfo-*- @c This is part of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. @c Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. @c See the file elisp.texi for copying conditions. @node Antinews, Index, Standard Hooks, Top @appendix Emacs 20 Antinews For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about downgrading to Emacs version 20.4. We hope you will enjoy the greater simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 21 features. In the following section, we carry this information back to Emacs 20.3, for which the previous printed edition of this manual was made. @section Old Lisp Features in Emacs 20 @itemize @bullet @item The @code{push} and @code{pop} macros are not defined. @item You can't display images in buffers. (Emacs is meant for editing text.) With no images, there are no display margins, and no tool bars. @item The @code{display} text property has no special meaning; you can use it freely in Lisp programs, with no effects except what you implement for yourself. With no images, who needs the @code{display} text property? @item Faces have fewer attributes. The attributes @code{:family}, @code{:height}, @code{:width}, @code{:weight}, and @code{:slant}, have been replaced with a font name, a ``bold'' flag, and an ``italic'' flag. The attributes @code{:overline}, @code{:strike-through} and @code{:box} have been eliminated too. With fewer font attributes, there are no functions @code{set-face-attribute} and @code{face-attribute}. Instead, you access these attributes using functions such as @code{face-font}, and set them with functions such as @code{set-face-font}. (These functions were available in Emacs 21, but are not as useful there.) @item There are no facilities for playing sound. This means Emacs will respect your peace and quiet, aside from occasional beeps. @item Regular expressions do not support the POSIX character classes such as @samp{[:alpha:]}. All characters are created equal. @item Hash tables have been eliminated; use alists instead. @item The Lisp printer does not detect and report circular structure. That is ok, because the Lisp reader cannot recreate circular structure anyway. However, there is a library @samp{cust-print.el} which can report circular structure. @item Emacs provides its own implementation of scroll bars, instead of using those of the X toolkit. They always use the frame foreground and background colors, so you cannot specify different colors for the scroll bars. @item For simplicity, all ASCII characters now have the same height and width. (Certain characters, such as Chinese characters, always have have twice the standard width.) All characters are created equal. @item Tooltips operate using ordinary Emacs frames. @item Areas of the mode line are not mouse-sensitive; however, some mouse commands are available for the mode line as a whole. @item Windows cannot have header lines. Conversely, there is no way to turn off the mode line of a window unless it is a minibuffer. @item Plain dashes are the only separators you can use in a menu. @item Vertical fractional scrolling does not exist. @item The functions @code{format} and @code{message} ignore and discard text properties. @item Colors are supported only on window systems, not on text-only terminals. So the support functions for colors on text-only terminals are not needed. @item The functions @code{color-values}, @code{color-defined-p} and @code{defined-colors} have been renamed to @code{x-color-values}, @code{x-color-defined-p} and @code{x-defined-colors}. @item Windows cannot be made fixed-width or fixed-height; Emacs will adjust the size of all windows when it needs to. @item The minibuffer prompt does not actually appear in content of the minibuffer; it is displayed specially in the minibuffer window. @item The ``exclusive open'' feature of @code{write-region} has been eliminated; any non-@code{nil} value for the seventh argument now means to ask the user for confirmation. @item The function @code{buffer-size} always reports on the current buffer. @item The function @code{assoc-delete-all} has itself been deleted. So there! @item The variable @code{small-temporary-file-directory} has no special meaning. There's only one variable for specifying which directory to use for temporary files, @code{temporary-file-directory}, but not all Emacs features use it anyway. Some use the @code{TMP} environment variable, and some use the @code{TMPDIR} environment variable. @item The variable @code{inhibit-modification-hooks} has no special meaning. @item The hook @code{fontification-functions} has been eliminated, but there are other hooks, such as @code{window-scroll-functions}, that you can use to do a similar job. @item The variable @code{redisplay-dont-pause} has no special meaning. @item The hook @code{calendar-move-hook} has been deleted. @item The function @code{move-to-column} treats any non-@code{nil} second argument just like @code{t}. @end itemize @section Old Lisp Features in Emacs 20.3 Here are the most important of the features that you will learn to do without in Emacs 20.3: Here are changes in the Lisp language itself: @itemize @bullet @item The functions @code{line-beginning-position} and @code{line-end-position} have been eliminated. @item The functions @code{directory-files-and-attributes}, @code{file-attributes-lessp}, and @code{file-expand-wildcards}, have been eliminated. @item The functions @code{decode-coding-region} and @code{encode-coding-region} leave text properties untouched, in case that is useful. (It rarely makes any sense, though.) @item The functions @code{position-bytes} and @code{byte-to-position} have been eliminated. @item Temporary buffers made with @code{with-output-to-temp-buffer} are now modifiable by default, and use Fundamental mode rather than Help mode. @item The functions @code{sref} interprets its @var{index} argument as a number of bytes, not a number of characters. And the function @code{char-bytes} actually tries to report on the number of bytes that a character occupies. @item The function @code{process-running-child-p} has been eliminated. @item The function @code{interrupt-process} and similar functions no longer do anything special when the second argument is @code{lambda}. @item The function @code{define-prefix-command} accepts only two arguments. @item The meaning of the second argument to @code{read-char}, @code{read-event}, and @code{read-char-exclusive} has been reversed: they use the current input method if the argument is if @code{nil}. @item The function @code{with-temp-message} has been eliminated. @item The function @code{clear-this-command-keys} has been eliminated. @item The functions @code{gap-position} and @code{gap-size} have been eliminated. @item In @code{modify-face}, an argument of @code{(nil)} has no special meaning. @item The base64 conversion functions have been eliminated. @item Wildcard support has been eliminated from @code{find-file} and allied functions. @item @code{file-attributes} returns the file size and the file inode number only as a simple integer. @end itemize