Mercurial > emacs
view etc/NEWS @ 95461:b4b6d87a7fb5
(dot, dotdot): Remove, update users.
".." has been used elsewhere in the file for a long time.
(LIBXT_STATIC): Remove conditional based on unused variable.
author | Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> |
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date | Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:59:27 +0000 |
parents | 8a703a3c84d7 |
children | 48aeb7d8e750 |
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GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. Copyright (C) 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end of the file for license conditions. Please send Emacs bug reports to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org. If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug. This file is about changes in Emacs version 23. See files NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18, and NEWS.1-17 for changes in older Emacs versions. You can narrow news to a specific version by calling `view-emacs-news' with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n. Temporary note: +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated. --- means no change in the manuals is called for. When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or --- so we will look at it and add it to the manual. * About external Lisp packages * Installation Changes in Emacs 23.1 ** The default X toolkit is now Gtk+, rather than Lucid. ** Fonts are handled by new code capable of dealing with multiple font backends. This requires the freetype and fontconfig libraries, and supports local fonts (fonts installed on the machine where Emacs is running). Additionally, the Xft library can be used for antialiasing support, the otf library for complex text layout by OpenType fonts, and the m17n library for text shaping. Fontconfig-like font names (e.g. monospace-12) are accepted. ** The new configuration option "--with-dbus" enables D-Bus language bindings for Emacs. ** The Mac Carbon port is no longer supported. Instead, use... [FIXME what?] ** configure now checks for libgif before libungif when searching for a GIF library. ** Support for systems without alloca has been removed. ** Support for Sun windows has been removed. ** Support for many obsolete platforms has been removed. See the list at the end of etc/MACHINES for details. ** The `emacstool' utility has been removed. ** The configure options `--with-gcc', `--without-gcc' have been removed. Configure will use gcc by default. Set the CC environment variable if you need control over which C compiler is used. ** The configure option `--with-gtk' has been removed. Gtk is now the default toolkit, but you can use --with-x-toolkit=gtk if necessary. * Changes in Emacs 23.1 ** Completion. *** `completion-styles' can be customized to choose your favorite completion. *** The default completion styles include a form of partial-completion. *** The new command `minibuffer-force-complete chooses one of the possible completions, rather than stopping at the common prefix. *** `completion-auto-help' can be set to `lazy' to list the completions only if you repeat the completion. This was already supported in `partial-completion-mode'. ** Emacs now supports using both X displays and ttys in one session. Start the server (M-x server-start). Then `emacsclient -t' creates a tty frame connected to the running emacs server. You can also use any number of different ttys. `emacsclient -c' creates a new X11 frame on the current $DISPLAY or a tty frame if $DISPLAY is not set. You can test for the presence of this feature in your Lisp code by testing for the `multi-tty' feature. ** The Emacs character set is now a superset of Unicode. (It has about four times the code space, which should be plenty). The internal encoding used for buffers and strings is now Unicode-based and called `utf-8-emacs'. utf-8-emacs is backwards compatible with the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. The `emacs-mule' coding system can still read and write data in the old internal encoding. Since the internal encoding is also used by default for byte-compiled files -- i.e. the normal coding system for byte-compiled Lisp files is now utf-8-Emacs -- Lisp containing non-ASCII characters which is compiled by Emacs 23 can't be read by earlier versions of Emacs. Files compiled by Emacs 20, 21, or 22 are loaded correctly as emacs-mule (whether or not they contain multibyte characters), which makes loading them somewhat slower than Emacs 23-compiled files. Thus it may be worth recompiling existing .elc files which don't need to be shared with older Emacsen. ** There are assorted new coding systems/aliases -- see M-x list-coding-systems. ** There is a new charset implementation with many new charsets. See M-x list-character-sets. New charsets can be defined conveniently as tables of unicodes. The dimension of a charset is now 1, 2, 3, or 4, and the size of each dimension is no longer limited to 94 or 96. A dynamic charset priority list is used to infer the charset of characters for display. ** There are new Chinese-GBK, Chinese-GB18030, Khmer, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Sinhala, and TaiViet language environments. ** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification. You can embed Emacs in another application on X11. The new command line option --parent-id is used to pass the parent window id to Emacs. See http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html for details about XEmbed. FIXME ** There is a new frame parameter, alpha. This [does something] on [some kind of system] with [some kind of X server] and [some kind of window manager]. ** Emacs comes with a new set of default icons. Various resolutions are available as etc/images/icons/hicolor/*/apps/emacs.png. The Emacs 22 icon is available as `emacs22.png' in the same location. ** Built-in functions (subr) can now have an interactive specification that is not a prompt string. If the `intspec' parameter of a `DEFUN' starts with a `(', the string is evaluated as a Lisp form. ** set-file-modes is now interactive and can take the mode value in symbolic notation thanks to auxiliary functions. ** split-window-preferred-function specifies whether display-buffer should split windows vertically or horizontally. ** Emacsclient has been extended to support opening a new terminal frame. Its behavior has been changed to open a new Emacs frame by default. Use the -c option to get the old behavior of opening files in the currently selected Emacs frame. ** The refcards are now shipped as PDF files. ** Emacs now supports the SVG image format through librsvg2. ** If you set find-file-confirm-nonexistent-file to t, then C-x C-f requires confirmation before opening a non-existent file. ** If the gpm mouse server is running and t-mouse-mode enabled, Emacs uses a Unix socket in a GNU/Linux console to talk to server, rather than faking events using the client program mev. This C level approach provides mouse highlighting, and help echoing in the minibuffer. ** Recentering changes *** The new variable next-error-recenter specifies how next-error should recenter the visited source file. Its value can be a number (for example, 0 for top line, -1 for bottom line), or nil for no recentering. *** New command recenter-top-bottom moves the current line to window center, top and bottom on successive invokations. *** C-l is bound to the new command recenter-top-bottom, rather than recenter. ** The mode-line displays a `@' if the default-directory for the current buffer is on a remote machine, or a hyphen otherwise. ** The mode-line displays a mode menu when mouse-1 is clicked on a minor mode, in the same way as it already did for major modes. ** The new command balance-windows-area balances windows both vertically and horizontally. ** The new command close-display-connection can be used to close a connection to a remote display, e.g. because the display is about to become unreachable. ** The command shell prompts for the default directory, when it is called with a prefix, and the default directory is a remote file name. This is because some file name handlers (like ange-ftp) are not able to run processes remotely. ** The new command `display-time-world' starts an updating time display using several time zones, in a buffer. ** Directory-local variables are now found in .dir-settings.el. See also `set-directory-project' and `define-project-bindings'. ** The new function `format-seconds' converts a number of seconds into a readable string of days, hours, etc. ** The new variables `before-init-time' and `after-init-time' record the value of `current-time' before and after Emacs loads the init files. ** The new function `emacs-uptime' returns the uptime of an Emacs instance. ** The new function `emacs-init-time' returns the duration of the Emacs initialization. ** The minor modes unify-8859-on-encoding-mode, unify-8859-on-decoding-mode are obsolete. ** The new commands `pp-macroexpand-expression' and `pp-macroexpand-last-sexp' pretty-print macro expansions. * Startup Changes in Emacs 23.1 ** The option `inhibit-startup-screen' (with aliases to old names `inhibit-splash-screen' and `inhibit-startup-message') doesn't inhibit display of the initial message in the *scratch* buffer. If you don't want to display the initial message in the *scratch* buffer at startup, you can set the option `initial-scratch-message' to nil. ** New user option `initial-buffer-choice' specifies what to display after starting Emacs: startup screen, *scratch* buffer, visiting a file or directory. ** New alias `argv' for `command-line-args-left' This is a convenience alias, so that one can write `(pop argv)' inside of --eval command line arguments in order to access following arguments. ** The abbrev file is no longer read at startup in batch mode. * Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1 +++ ** In Dired-x, all command guesses for ! are now added to the default list accessible by M-n instead of pushing all guesses temporarily into the history list. ** The following input methods were removed in Emacs 22.2, but this was not advertised: danish-alt-postfix, esperanto-alt-postfix, finnish-alt-postfix, german-alt-postfix, icelandic-alt-postfix, norwegian-alt-postfix, scandinavian-alt-postfix, spanish-alt-postfix, and swedish-alt-postfix. Use the versions without "alt-", which are identical. * Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1 ** Mark changes +++ *** Transient Mark mode is now on by default. +++ *** mark-even-if-inactive now defaults to t +++ *** When Transient Mark mode is on, C-SPC C-SPC pushes a mark without activating it. +++ *** When Transient Mark mode is on, M-q now fills the region if the region is active. Otherwise, it fills the current paragraph. +++ *** When Transient Mark mode is on, M-$ now checks spelling of the region if the region is active. Otherwise, it checks spelling of the word at point. *** When Transient Mark mode is on, TAB now indents the region if the region is active. *** `use-empty-active-region' controls whether an empty active region in Transient Mark mode should make commands operate on that empty region. ** Temporarily active regions *** The new variable shift-select-mode, non-nil by default, controls shift-selection. When Shift Select mode is on, shift-translated motion keys (e.g. S-left and S-down) activate and extend a temporary region, similar to mouse-selection. *** Temporarily active regions, created using shift-selection or mouse-selection, are not necessarily deactivated in the next command. They are only deactivated after point motion commands that are not shift-translated, or after commands that would ordinarily deactivate the mark in Transient Mark mode (e.g., any command that modifies the buffer). +++ ** C-M-% now shows replacement as it would look in the buffer, with `\N' and `\&' substituted according to the match. Old behavior can be restored by customizing `query-replace-show-replacement'. ** C-z now invokes `suspend-frame', C-x C-c now invokes `save-buffers-kill-terminal'. ** New command kill-matching-buffers kills buffers whose name matches a regexp. ** You can disable kill ring commands from accessing the primary selection by setting `x-select-enable-primary' to nil. ** If `select-active-regions' is t, setting the mark automatically makes the new region into the primary selection (for interaction with other window applications). If you enable this, you might want to bind `mouse-yank-primary' to Mouse-2. ** If `yank-pop-change-selection' is t, rotating the kill ring also updates the selection or clipboard to the current yank, just as M-w would do so with the text it copies to the kill ring. ** Minibuffer changes *** Minibuffer input of shell commands now comes with completion. *** Operations like C-x b and C-x C-f which use switch-to-buffer do not fail any more when used in a minibuffer or a dedicated window. Instead, they fallback on using pop-to-buffer which will use some other window. *** When M-n in the minibuffer reaches the end of the list of defaults, it adds the completion list to the end, so next M-n continues putting completion items to the minibuffer. The same principle applies to incremental search commands as well: C-s or C-M-s starts searching the default values and after the end of defaults they continue searching minibuffer completion items. *** In C-x d, if you type M-n you get the visited file name of the current buffer. *** A list of default commands extracted from mailcap according to file extensions are available in the list of default values accessible by M-n in the minibuffer that reads a shell command for M-! (shell-command) and fills a list of commands for the current file, and in Dired for ! (dired-do-shell-command) that fills a list of commands for the intersection of file types of marked Dired files. *** A list of regexp default values is available via M-n for `occur', `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many'. This list includes the active region in transient-mark-mode, the word under the cursor, the last isearch regexp, the last isearch string and the last replacement regexp. *** isearch started in the minibuffer searches in the minibuffer history. Reverse isearch commands (C-r, C-M-r) search in previous minibuffer history elements, and forward isearch commands (C-s, C-M-s) search in next history elements. When the reverse search reaches the first history element, it wraps to the last history element, and the forward search wraps to the first history element. When the search is terminated, the history element containing the search string becomes the current. ** New faces *** `mode-line-emphasis' is used to highlight certain mode-line information; for example while waiting for a VC command to finish. ** Face changes *** The new function `face-all-attributes' returns an alist describing all the basic attributes of a given face. * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1 ** FIXME add details of new packages imported from lisp/gnus. [Maybe some information from doc/misc/gnus-coding.texi can be reused] ** The package doc-view.el has been added. It supports viewing of PDF, PostScript and DVI documents inside an Emacs buffer by converting the document to a set of PNG images first. One can also search for a regular expression in the document. The commentary of the file explains its usage. ** The nXML package has been added. It is a new mode for editing XML documents. nXML mode allows a schema to be associated with the XML document being edited. nXML mode uses Relax NG as its schema language. The schema is used to provide two key features: *** Continuous validation. nXML validates as you type, highlighting any invalid parts of your document. *** Completion. nXML can assist you in entering an element name, attribute name or data value by using information about what is allowed by the schema in that context. ** A new game called `bubbles' has been added. This is a version of the "Same Game" with configurable difficulty level. ** minibuffer-indicate-depth-mode shows the minibuffer depth in the prompt. ** Remember Mode (remember.el) is now included with Emacs. It is a mode for quickly jotting down things to remember. Included with remember.el is a backend that can save notes to a Diary file. Please consult the Remember Manual for usage details. ** D-Bus language bindings for Elisp are provided by the package dbus.el and by extensions to the C modules of Emacs. D-Bus is an inter-process communication mechanism for applications residing on the same host, based on messages. See the manual for further details. ** zeroconf.el offers service discovery and service publishing interfaces according to the zeroconf specification. It communicates with Avahi, a zeroconf implementation, via D-Bus messages on systems which have installed this software. ** EasyPG is now part of the Emacs distribution. It is an all-in-one GnuPG interface which includes GnuPG keyring browser, cryptographic operations on regions and files, and automatic encryption of *.gpg files. See the EasyPG Assistant User's Manual for further details. ** json.el is now included with Emacs. It is a library for parsing and generating JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format. ** Auto Composition Mode is a minor mode that composes characters automatically when they are displayed. It is globally on by default. It uses `auto-composition-function' (default `auto-compose-chars'). ** The package linum.el is now included with Emacs. It it a new minor mode to display line numbers for the current buffer. ** proced.el has been added. It operates on processes like dired. Proced makes an Emacs buffer containing a listing of the current processes (using ps(1)). You can use the normal Emacs commands to move around in this buffer, and special Proced commands to operate on the processes listed. ** bug-reference.el provides clickable links to bug reports. * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1 ** Icomplete: `icomplete-prospects-height' supercedes `icomplete-prospects-length'. ** A new `whitespace' package has been installed, and the pre-existing one renamed to `old-whitespace'. [FIXME someone explain why this is good, if it is...] ** abbrev was rewritten in Elisp and extended with more flexibility. *** New functions: abbrev-get, abbrev-put, abbrev-table-get, abbrev-table-put, abbrev-table-p, abbrev-insert, abbrev-table-menu. *** Special hook `abbrev-expand-functions' obsoletes `pre-abbrev-expand-hook'. *** `make-abbrev-table', `define-abbrev', `define-abbrev-table' all take extra arguments for arbitrary properties. *** New variable `abbrev-minor-mode-table-alist'. *** `local-abbrev-table' can hold a list of abbrev-tables. *** Abbrevs have now the following special properties: `:count', `:system', `:enable-function', `:case-fixed'. *** Abbrev-tables have now the following special properties: `:parents', `:case-fixed', `:enable-function', `:regexp', `abbrev-table-modiff'. ** Help mode *** New macro `with-help-window' should set up help windows better than `with-output-to-temp-buffer' with `print-help-return-message'. *** New option `help-window-select' permits to customize whether help window shall be automatically selected when invoking help. *** New variable `help-window-point-marker' permits to specify new position of point in help window (for example in `view-lossage'). ** view-remove-frame-by-deleting is now by default t since users found iconification of view-mode frames distracting. ** Isearch mode *** New command `isearch-occur' bound to `M-s o' in isearch mode runs `occur' with the current search string. *** isearch can now search through multiple ChangeLog files. When running isearch in a ChangeLog file, if the search fails, then another C-s tries searching the previous ChangeLog, if there is one (e.g. go from ChangeLog to ChangeLog.12). This is enabled if isearch-buffers-multi is non-nil. *** The part of an isearch that failed to match is highlighted in `isearch-fail' face. *** `C-h C-h' in isearch mode displays isearch-specific Help screen, `C-h b' displays all isearch key bindings, `C-h k' displays the full documentation of the given isearch key sequence, `C-h m' displays documentation of isearch mode. All the rest Help commands exit isearch mode and execute their global definitions. ** archive-mode has basic support to browse Rar archives. ** talk.el has been extended for multiple tty support. ** Compile and grep modes *** The mode-line entry for the *compilation* and *grep* buffer is color coded. It has different colors for to show that: (a) the command is still running, (b) successful completion, (c) error. *** compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error tells `compile' to jump to the first error encountered during compilations. ** In the `copyright' package, you can specify your copyright holders' names. Only copyright lines with holders matching copyright-names-regexp will be considered for update. ** The `copyright' package looks for copyright at the end of the buffer if `copyright-at-end-flag' is non-nil (change-log-mode sets this). ** eldoc highlights the function argument under point with the face `eldoc-highlight-function-argument'. ** hide-ifdef-mode permits to shadow ifdef-blocks instead of hiding them. See option `hide-ifdef-shadow' and function `hide-ifdef-toggle-shadowing'. +++ ** defcustom accepts new keyword arguments, `:safe' and `:risky', which set a variable's `safe-local-variable' and `risky-local-variable' property. ** Etags changes *** The --members option is now the default. Use --no-members if you want the old default behaviour of not tagging struct members in C, members variables in C++ and variables in PHP. ** VC *** VC now supports applying VC operations to a set of files at a time. This enables VC to work much more effectively with changeset-oriented version-control systems such as Subversion, GNU Arch, Mercurial, Git and Bzr. VC will now pass a multiple-file commit to these systems as a single changeset. *** vc-dir is a new command that displays file names and their VC status. It allows to apply various VC operations to a file or a set of files. *** Clicking on the VC mode-line entry now pops the VC menu. *** The VC mode-line entry now has a tooltip that explains the VC file status. *** In VC Annotate mode, you can type V to toggle the annotation visibility. *** In VC Annotate mode, you can type f to show the file revision on the current line. *** vc-git supports the "git grep" command. *** Asynchronous VC commands display [Waiting...] in the mode-line of the corresponding buffer as long as the asynchronous process is active. *** Log entries can be modified using the key "e" in log-view. For now only CVS, RCS, SCCS and SVN support this functionality. This is done by the `modify-change-comment' backend function. *** VC Support for Meta-CVS has been removed for lack of maintainer able to update it to the new VC. ** smerge-refine highlights word-level details of changes in conflict. It's used automatically as you move through conflicts, see smerge-auto-refine. ** Diff mode *** diff-refine-hunk highlights word-level details of changes in a diff hunk. It's used automatically as you move through hunks, see diff-auto-refine. It is bound to `C-c C-b'. *** diff-add-change-log-entries-other-window iterates through the diff buffer and tries to create ChangeLog entries for each change. It is bound to `C-x 4 A'. ** log-edit now has a command bound to C-c C-d to show the diff for the files involved. ** In Change Log mode, the new function `change-log-find-file', bound to C-c C-f, finds the file associated with the current log entry. ** sgml-electric-tag-pair-mode lets you simultaneously edit matched tag pairs. ** The appearance of superscript and subscript in TeX is more customizable. See the documentation of the variables: tex-fontify-script, tex-font-script-display, tex-suscript-height-ratio, and tex-suscript-height-minimum. ** BibTeX mode *** New command `bibtex-initialize' (re)initializes BibTeX buffers. *** New `bibtex-entry-format' options `whitespace', `braces', and `string', disabled by default. *** New variable `bibtex-cite-matcher-alist' contains rules to identify cited keys in BibTeX entries, used by `bibtex-find-crossref'. *** Command `bibtex-url' allows multiple URLs per entry. +++ ** Tramp *** New connection methods. The new methods "plinkx", "plink2", "psftp", "sftp" and "fish" have been introduced. There are also new so-called gateway methods "tunnel" and "socks". *** Multihop syntax has been removed. The pseudo-method "multi" has been removed. Instead of, multi hops can be specified by the new variable `tramp-default-proxies-alist'. *** More default settings. Default values can be set via the variables `tramp-default-user', `tramp-default-user-alist' and `tramp-default-host'. *** Connection information is cached. In order to reduce connection setup, information about used connections are kept persistent in a file. The name of this file is defined in the variable `tramp-persistency-file-name'. *** Control of remote processes. Running processes on a remote host can be controlled by settings in `tramp-remote-path' and `tramp-remote-process-environment'. *** Success of remote copy is checked. When the variable `file-precious-flag' is set, the success of a remote file copy is checked via the file's checksum. ** Calendar and diary +++ *** There is a new date style, `iso', essentially year/month/day. The variable `european-calendar-style' is obsolete - use `calendar-date-style'. Similarly, the commands `american-calendar' and `european-calendar' should be replaced by `calendar-set-date-style'. +++ *** The calendar namespace has been rationalized. All functions and variables now begin with a `calendar-', `diary-', or `holiday-' prefix. The various calendar systems have secondary prefixes, eg `calendar-french-'. The old names you are likely to use directly still exist, for the time being, as aliases, but please start using the new names. *** The function `holiday-chinese' computes holidays on the Chinese calendar. It has been used to add items to the list `holiday-oriental-holidays'. *** `diary-remind' accepts a negative number -DAYS as a shorthand for the list (1 2 ... DAYS). ** Miscellaneous programming mode changes *** The file etc/emacs.py now supports both Python 2 and 3, meaning that either version can be used as inferior Python by python.el. *** Python mode now has `pdbtrack' functionality. When using pdb to debug a Python program, pdbtrack notices the pdb prompt and displays the source file and line that the program is stopped at, much the same way as gud-mode does for debugging C programs with gdb. *** The variable `fortran-line-length' can change the fixed-form line-length. *** In Fortran mode, M-; is now bound to the standard comment-dwim, rather than fortran-indent-comment. +++ *** (The increasingly misnamed) F90 mode supports Fortran 2003 syntax. ** Gnus package *** The Gnus package has been updated *** In Emacs 23, Gnus uses Emacs' new internal coding system `utf-8-emacs' for saving articles drafts and ~/.newsrc.eld. These file may not be read correctly in Emacs 22 and below. If you want to Gnus across different Emacs versions, you may set `mm-auto-save-coding-system' to `emacs-mule'. *** There are many news features, bug fixes and improvements. See the file GNUS-NEWS or the node "No Gnus" in the Gnus manual for details. ** Miscellaneous *** goto-address.el provides two new minor modes, goto-address-mode and goto-address-prog-mode, which buttonize URLS and email addresses. *** comint-mode uses `start-file-process' now (see Lisp Changes). If `default-directory' is a remote file name, subprocesses are started on the corresponding remote system. *** C-x C-q in dired-mode now runs the command wdired-change-to-wdired-mode, and C-x C-q in wdired-mode exits it with asking a question about saving changes. *** The new command `eshell/info' runs info in an eshell buffer. *** The pcmpl-unix package supports hostname completion for ssh and scp. *** WoMan tries to add locale-specific manual page directories to the search path. This can be disabled by setting `woman-locale' to nil. *** The new variable `ffap-rfc-directories' specifies a list of local directories in which `ffap-rfc' will first search for RFCs. *** net-utils has an `iwconfig' command, similar to the existing `ifconfig'. It is used to configure wireless interfaces. * Changes in Emacs 23.1 on non-free operating systems --- ** IPv6 is supported on MS-Windows. Emacs now supports IPv6 on Windows XP and later, and earlier versions of Windows with third party IPv6 stacks installed. In Emacs 22, IPv6 was supported on other platforms, but not on Windows due to using the winsock 1.1 header file, even though Emacs was linking to the winsock 2 library. --- ** Busy cursor (hourglass) now displays on MS-Windows. When Emacs is busy, an hourglass mouse cursor is displayed on Windows. In Emacs 22 only X supported the busy cursor. --- ** Battery status is available on MS-Windows Emacs can now display the battery status in the mode-line when enabled with display-battery-mode or from the Options menu. More verbose battery information is also available with the command `battery'. In Emacs 22 battery status was supported only on GNU/Linux and Mac. ** More keys available on MS-Windows. Keys normally associated with IMEs, and some exotic keys not normally found on standard keyboards have been given names so they can be bound to functions inside Emacs. If there are keys on your keyboard that have not been exposed to Emacs in the past, try C-h k to see if they are available now. Emacs can now bind functions to the extra buttons for media player and browser control present on some keyboards. These buttons are disabled by default, since enabling them prevents their system-wide use when Emacs has focus. To enable them, set the variable w32-pass-multimedia-buttons to nil. See the doc string of that variable for the list of extra keys that are available. * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1 ** Variables cannot be both buffer-local and frame-local any more. ** The argument DEFAULT of minibuffer input functions `read-from-minibuffer', `read-string', `completing-read', `read-buffer', `read-command', `read-variable' now can be a list of default values. The elements of this list are available for inserting to the minibuffer with `M-n'. If the user enters empty input, the first element is used as the default. ** `functionp' returns nil for special forms. I.e., it only returns t for objects that can be passed to `funcall'. +++ ** The multibyteness of process filters is determined by the coding-system used for decoding. The functions `process-filter-multibyte-p' and `set-process-filter-multibyte' are obsolete. ** The behavior of map-char-table has changed. It may call the specified function with a cons (FROM . TO) as a key if characters in that range have the same value. ** The value of the function `charset-id' is now always 0. ** The functions `register-char-codings' and `coding-system-spec' have been removed. ** The cpXXX coding systems are now supported automatically. The functions cp-...-codepage, which you had to use in Emacs 22 to enable support for these coding systems, have been deleted. +++ ** The function `dired-call-process' has been removed. ** The variable `byte-compile-warnings' can now be a list starting with `not', meaning to disable the specified warnings. The meaning of this list may therefore be the reverse of what you expect (of course, this is only an issue if you make use of the new `not' syntax). Rather than checking/manipulating elements directly, use the new functions `byte-compile-warning-enabled-p', `byte-compile-disable-warning', and `byte-compile-enable-warning.' ** `mode-name' is no longer guaranteed to be a string. Use `(format-mode-line mode-name)' to ensure a string value. ** The following features have been removed. They were used for displaying various scripts with specific fonts, and are no longer needed now that OpenType font support is available: *** `devanagari' and `devan-util', and all associated devanagari-* and dev-* functions and variables (formerly used for Devanagari script). *** `kannada' and `knd-util', and all associated kannada-* and knd-* functions and variables (formerly used for Kannada script). *** `malayalam' and `mlm-util', and all associated malayalam-* and mlm-* functions and variables (formerly used for Malayalam script). *** `tamil' and `tml-util, and all associated tamil-* and tml-* functions and variables (formerly used for Tamil script). * Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1 ** `all-completions' may now return the base size in the last cdr. Since this means the returned list is not properly nil-terminated, this is an incompatible change and is thus enabled by the new variable completion-all-completions-with-base-size. ** New function `apply-partially' for curried application. ** `fill-forward-paragraph-function' specifies which function the filling code should use to find paragraph boundaries. ** The variable `this-command-keys-shift-translated' is non-nil if the key sequence invoking the current command was found by shift-translation. ** The new interactive spec code ^ says to first call handle-shift-selection if shift-select-mode is non-nil, before reading the command arguments. ** When deleting a terminal, the special hook `delete-terminal-functions' is run. ** The `read-shell-command' function does what its name says, with completion. It uses the minibuffer-local-shell-command-map for that. ** The `buffer-swap-text' function can swap the text between two buffers. This can be useful for modes such as tar-mode, archive-mode, RMAIL. ** `clear-image-cache' can be told to flush only images of a specific file. ** clone-indirect-buffer now runs the clone-indirect-buffer-hook. ** `beginning-of-defun-function' now takes one argument, the count given to `beginning-of-defun'. ** The variable `inhibit-changing-match-data', if non-nil, prevents the search and match primitives from changing the match data. +++ ** New function `match-substitute-replacement' returns the result of `replace-match' without actually using it in the buffer. ** If a local hook function has a non-nil `permanent-local-hook' property, then `kill-all-local-variables' does not remove it from the local value of the hook variable. This means it remains even if you change major modes. +++ ** A list of default values can be specified for the DEFAULT argument of functions `read-from-minibuffer', `read-string', `read-command', `read-variable', `read-buffer', `completing-read'. Elements of this list are available for inserting into the minibuffer by typing `M-n'. For empty input these functions return the first element of this list. ** `custom-note-var-changed' tells Custom to treat the change in a certain variable as having been made within Custom. ** `frame-inherited-parameters' lets new frames inherit parameters from the selected frame. ** Commands should use `use-region-p' to test whether there is an active region that they should operate on. ** `region-active-p' returns non-nil when Transient Mark mode is enabled and there is an active region. This is NOT the best function to use to test whether a command should operate on the region instead of the usual behavior -- for that, use `use-region-p'. ** If a command sets `transient-mark-mode' to (only . OLDVAL), that means to activate transient-mark-mode temporarily, until the next unshifted point motion command or mark deactivation. Afterwards, reset transient-mark-mode to the value OLDVAL. The values `only' and `identity', introduced in Emacs 22, are now deprecated. ** New keymap `input-decode-map' overrides like key-translation-map, but applies before function-key-map. Also it is terminal-local contrary to key-translation-map. Terminal-specific key-sequences are generally added to this map rather than to function-key-map now. ** The new macro `declare-function' suppresses compiler warnings about undefined functions. The new `check-declare' package verifies that such statements are accurate (i.e. the functions are actually defined in the specified files). ** `ignore-errors' is now a standard macro (does not require the CL package). ** The new function `read-color' reads a color name using the minibuffer. ** `interprogram-paste-function' can now return one string or a list of strings. In the latter case, Emacs puts the second and following strings on the kill ring. ** Character code, representation, and charset changes. The character code space is now 0x0..0x3FFFFF with no gap. Characters of code 0x0..0x10FFFF are Unicode characters of the same code points. Characters of code 0x3FFF80..0x3FFFFF are raw 8-bit bytes. Generic characters no longer exist. In buffer and string, characters are represented by UTF-8 byte sequence in a multibyte buffer/string. The concept of a charset has changed. A single character may belong to multiple charsets (e.g. a-grave, U+00E0, belongs to charsets unicode, iso-8859-1, iso-8859-3, etc). *** The new function `characterp' returns t if and only if the argument is a character. This replaces `char-valid-p', which is now obsolete. *** The new function `max-char' returns the maximum character code (currently it is #x3FFFFF). *** The functions `encode-char' and `decode-char' now accept any character sets. *** The function `define-charset' now accepts a completely different form of arguments (old-style arguments still work). *** The new function `define-charset-alias' defines an alias of a charset. *** The value of the function `char-charset' depends on the current priorities of charsets. *** The new function `charset-priority-list' returns the list of charsets ordered by priority. *** The new function `set-charset-priority' sets priorities of charsets. *** The new function `unibyte-string' make a unibyte string from bytes. *** The new function `define-char-code-property' defines a character code property. *** The new function `char-code-property-description' returns the description string of a character code property. *** The function get-char-code-property now accepts many Unicode base character properties. They are `name', `general-category', `canonical-combining-class', `bidi-class', `decomposition', `decimal-digit-value', `digit-value', `numeric-value', `mirrored', `old-name', `iso-10646-comment', `uppercase', `lowercase', and `titlecase'. *** The new variable `find-word-boundary-function-table' is a char-table of functions to search for a word boundary. *** The new variable `char-script-table' is a char-table of script names. *** The new variable `char-width-table' is a char-table of character widths. *** The new variable `print-charset-text-property' controls how to handle `charset' text property on printing a string. *** The new variable `printable-chars' is a char-table defining if a character is printable or not. *** The functions `modify-syntax-entry' and `modify-category-entry' now accepts a cons of characters as the first argument, and modify all entries in that range of characters. +++ *** `translation-table-for-input' is now obsolete. ** Code conversion changes *** The new function `define-coding-system' should be used to define a coding system instead of `make-coding-system' (which is now obsolete). *** The functions `encode-coding-region' and `decode-coding-region' have an optional 4th argument to specify where the result of conversion should go. *** The functions `encode-coding-string' and `decode-coding-string' have an optional 4th argument specifying a buffer to store the result of conversion. *** The new function `with-coding-priority' executes the body part with the specified coding system priority order. *** The new function `check-coding-systems-region' checks if the text in the region is encodable by the specified coding systems. *** The new function `coding-system-aliases' returns a list of aliases of a coding system. *** The new function `coding-system-charset-list' returns a list of charsets supported by a coding system. *** The new function `coding-system-priority-list' returns a list of coding systems ordered by their priorities. *** The new function `set-coding-system-priority' sets priorities of coding systems. *** The functions `set-coding-priority' and `make-coding-system' are obsolete. ** There is a new input method, Robin, different from Quail. It has three functionalities: i) a simple input method (converts an ASCII sequence into a string). ii) converts an existing buffer substring into another string iii) reverse conversion (each character produced by a robin rule can hold the original ASCII sequence as a char-code-property) *** The new function `robin-define-package' defines a Robin package. *** The new function `robin-modify-package' modifies an existing Robin package. *** The new function `robin-use-package' starts using a Robin package as an input method. ** Changes related to the new font backend Which font backends to use can be specified by the X resource "FontBackend". For instance, to use both X core fonts and Xft fonts: Emacs.FontBackend: x,xft If this resource is not set, Emacs tries to use all font backends available on your graphic device. *** New frame parameter `font-backend' specifies a list of font-backends supported by the frame's graphic device. On X, they are currently `x' and `xft'. *** New function `fontp' checks if the argument is a font-spec or font-entity. *** New function `font-spec' creates a new font-spec object. *** New function `font-get' returns a font property value. *** New function `font-put' sets a font property value. *** New function `list-fonts' returns a list of font-entities matching the given specification. *** New function `list-families' returns a list of family names of available fonts. *** New function `font-font' returns a font-entity best matching with the given specification. *** New function `font-xlfd-name' returns an XLFD name of a given font (font-spec, font-entity, or font-object). *** New function `clear-font-cache' clears all font caches. *** The function `set-fontset-font' now accepts a script name as the second argument, and has an optional 5th argument to control how to set the font. ** Changes related to multiple tty support *** $TERM is now set to `dumb' for subprocesses. If you want to know the $TERM inherited by Emacs you will have to look inside initial-environment. *** $DISPLAY is now dynamically inherited from the frame's `display'. *** The `window-system' variable has been made frame-local. The new `initial-window-system' variable contains the `window-system' value for the first frame. `window-system' is also now a function that takes a frame argument. *** You can specify a terminal device (`tty' parameter) and a terminal type (`tty-type' parameter) to `make-terminal-frame'. *** The new function `make-frame-on-tty' allows you to create a new frame on another tty device interactively. *** The function `make-frame-on-display' now works during a tty session, and `make-frame-on-tty' works during a graphical session. *** New functions: `delete-tty', `suspend-tty', `resume-tty'. *** A new data type for terminals with functions: `get-device-terminal', `terminal-parameters', `terminal-parameter', `set-terminal-parameter'. *** New hooks: `suspend-tty-functions' and `resume-tty-functions' are called after a tty frame has been suspended or resumed, respectively. The functions are called with the terminal id of the frame being suspended/resumed as a parameter. *** New function: `environment'. *** New variable: `local-function-key-map'. This in addition to the global function-key-map variable that already existed. The global variable is not used directly any more; instead, the local-function-key-map is initialized so as to inherit from function-key-map. *** `initial-environment' holds the environment inherited from Emacs's parent. *** The `keyboard-translate-table' variable and the terminal and keyboard coding systems have been made terminal-local. *** In addition to the global function-key-map, Emacs has terminal-local local-function-key-map variables, and uses them instead of the global keymaps to set up translations and function key sequences relevant to a specific terminal device. ** You can now also pass the value of the `invisible' property to invisible-p to check whether it would cause the text to be invisible. Convenient when checking invisibility of text which has no buffer position (e.g. in before/after-strings). ** Non-breaking space now acts as whitespace. +++ ** In `condition-case', a handler can specify "let the debugger run first". You do this by writing `debug' in the list of conditions to be handled, like this: (condition-case nil (foo bar) ((debug error) nil)) ** The `require-match' argument to `completing-read' accepts a new value `confirm-only'. +++ ** The regexp form \(?<num>:<regexp>\) specifies the group number explicitly. ** New function `window-full-width-p' returns t if a window is as wide as its frame. ** The new function `split-string-and-unquote' does (what?) ** The new function `combine-and-quote-strings' does (what?) ** The new function `image-refresh' refreshes all images associated with a given image specification. +++ ** New variable `user-emacs-directory'. Use this instead of "~/.emacs.d". +++ ** The new function `start-file-process' is similar to `start-process', but obeys file handlers. The file handler is chosen based on `default-directory'. The functions `start-file-process-shell-command' and `process-file-shell-command' are also new; they call internally `start-file-process' and `process-file', respectively. ** The new function `process-lines' executes an external program and returns its output as a list of lines. +++ ** `file-remote-p' has new optional parameters IDENTIFICATION and CONNECTED. IDENTIFICATION specifies which part of the remote identifier has to be returned. With CONNECTED passed non-nil, it is checked whether a remote connection has been established already. ** The two new functions `looking-at-p' and `string-match-p' can do the same matching as `looking-at' and `string-match' without changing the match data. ** The interactive-form of a function can be added post-facto via the `interactive-form' symbol property. Mostly useful to add complex interactive forms to subroutines. * New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 23.1 ** find-cmd.el can build `find' commands using lisp syntax. ** The package isearch-multi.el has been added. It implements a new mode `isearch-buffers-minor-mode' that allows isearch to search through multiple buffers. In this mode a new variable `isearch-buffers-next-buffer-function' defines the function to call to get the next buffer to search in the series of multiple buffers. ** The new package avl-tree.el deals with the AVL tree data structure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This file is part of GNU Emacs. GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. Local variables: mode: outline paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" end: arch-tag: e759449d-88b3-4de4-9900-3a6c3dfa23e2