428
+ − 1 -*- mode:outline -*-
+ − 2
+ − 3 * Introduction
+ − 4 ==============
+ − 5
2291
+ − 6 This file presents the changes in recent XEmacs versions. Primarily
+ − 7 it documents user-visible (interface) changes, but also includes
+ − 8 internal changes of possible interest to users. When describing new
+ − 9 features, we also document ways of reverting to the old behavior,
+ − 10 where applicable. If you dislike a recent change in how XEmacs
+ − 11 behaves, you may find a remedy in this file.
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+ − 12
2291
+ − 13 Use `C-c C-f' to move to the next heading at the same level, and
+ − 14 `C-c C-b' to move to the previous heading at this level. `C-h m' gives
+ − 15 help on Outline mode. The menubar provides more commands.
428
+ − 16
+ − 17 Users who would like to know which capabilities have been introduced
+ − 18 in each release should look at the appropriate section of this file.
+ − 19 Starting with version 20.0, XEmacs includes ChangeLogs, which can be
+ − 20 consulted for a more detailed list of changes.
+ − 21
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+ − 22 N.B. The term "GNU Emacs" refers to any release of Emacs from the
+ − 23 Free Software Foundation's GNU Project starting with Version 19.
+ − 24 The term "XEmacs" refers to this program or sometimes to its
+ − 25 predecessors "Era" and "Lucid Emacs". The predecessor of all these
+ − 26 programs is called "Emacs 18". When no particular version is
+ − 27 implied, "Emacs" will be used.
+ − 28
+ − 29
+ − 30 * Changes in XEmacs 21.5
+ − 31 ========================
+ − 32
+ − 33 ** Summary of user-visible changes:
+ − 34
+ − 35 -- Bignums have been implemented.
+ − 36 -- Windows users have benefit of the full Win32 Unicode API.
+ − 37 -- (in process) Xft provides antialiased fonts on X11.
2681
+ − 38 -- "XEmacs" used as X11 application class
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+ − 39
+ − 40 ** Bignum implementation.
+ − 41
+ − 42 Integer computations no longer overflow, rational arithmetic "just
+ − 43 works", and very precise floating point calculation is available.
+ − 44 This also means that large buffers (over 2^30 = 1GB) can be
+ − 45 manipulated.
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+ − 46
2681
+ − 47 ** "XEmacs" used as X11 application class
+ − 48
+ − 49 Previously, XEmacs checked the X11 resource database for resources starting
2757
+ − 50 with XEmacs, and used "XEmacs" as its application class if any existed;
+ − 51 otherwise it used "Emacs", for backward compatibility. Because of
+ − 52 divergence between the resources that GNU Emacs and XEmacs use, we've
+ − 53 changed this. If you don't have the time to migrate your resource DB right
+ − 54 now, set USE_EMACS_AS_DEFAULT_APPLICATION_CLASS in your environment before
+ − 55 starting XEmacs, for the old behavior. This workaround will go away in the
+ − 56 course of the next major release, though, so you will have to migrate your
+ − 57 resources at some point.
2681
+ − 58
428
+ − 59
2862
+ − 60 * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.5
+ − 61 ==========================================
+ − 62
+ − 63 ** The ALLOW-NON-ASCII argument to event-to-character is not used.
+ − 64
+ − 65 While it is still accepted, for compatibilty with older code,
+ − 66 event-to-character no longer takes note of this argument, since the specific
+ − 67 type of mapping between characters and keysyms that it affected is no longer
+ − 68 in place.
+ − 69
3674
+ − 70 ** The set-charset-registry function is deprecated.
+ − 71
+ − 72 set-charset-registries replaces it; this function takes a vector of X11
+ − 73 CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODINGs, and doesn't support regexp or XLFD
+ − 74 wildcarding. It improves lookup performance (especially failures) for those
+ − 75 X servers with large numbers of fonts.
+ − 76
+ − 77 ** define-specifier-tag now has an optional CHARSET-PREDICATE parameter.
+ − 78
+ − 79 This allows you to create specifier tags that match over Mule character sets
+ − 80 when instantiating fonts, finally making it possible to explicitly set a
+ − 81 font for a charset in given face with set-face-font.
+ − 82
2862
+ − 83
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+ − 84 * Changes in XEmacs 21.4
428
+ − 85 ========================
+ − 86
479
+ − 87 ** Summary of user-visible changes:
+ − 88
+ − 89 -- The delete key now deletes forward by default.
+ − 90 -- Shifted motion keys now select text by default.
+ − 91 -- You can now build XEmacs with support for GTK+ widget set.
+ − 92 -- ~/.xemacs/init.el is now the preferred location for the init file.
+ − 93 - XEmacs now supports a `~/.xemacs/init.el' startup file.
+ − 94 - Custom file will move to ~/.xemacs/custom.el.
+ − 95 -- Much-improved sample init.el, showing how to use many useful features.
+ − 96 -- XEmacs support for menu accelerators has been much improved.
+ − 97 -- Default menubar improvements.
+ − 98 - Default menubar has many new commands and better organization.
+ − 99 - The font-menu is now available under MS Windows.
+ − 100 -- Dialog box improvements, including a real file dialog box.
+ − 101 - XEmacs now has a proper file dialog box under MS Windows (and GTK)!
+ − 102 - The old clunky file dialog box is improved.
+ − 103 - Keyboard traversal now works correctly in MS Windows dialog boxes.
+ − 104 - There is a Search dialog box available from Edit->Find...
+ − 105 -- New buffer tabs.
+ − 106 -- There is a new MS Windows installer, netinstall, ported from Cygwin.
+ − 107 -- The subprocess quote-handling mechanism under Windows is much improved.
+ − 108 -- Printing support now available under MS Windows.
+ − 109 -- Selection improvements.
+ − 110 - Kill and yank now interact with the clipboard under Windows.
+ − 111 - MS Windows support for selection is now much more robust.
+ − 112 - Motif selection support is now more correct (but slower).
+ − 113 -- Mail spool locking now works correctly.
+ − 114 -- International support changes.
+ − 115 - The default coding-priority-list is now safer.
+ − 116 - International keysyms are now supported under X.
+ − 117 - MS Windows 1251 code page now supported.
+ − 118 - Czech, Thai, Cyrillic-KOI8, Vietnamese, Ethiopic now supported.
+ − 119 - Proper support for words in Latin 3 and Latin 4.
+ − 120 -- Help buffers contain hyperlinks, and other changes.
+ − 121 -- The modeline's text is now scrollable.
+ − 122 -- The mouse wheel under MS Windows now functions correctly.
+ − 123 -- Interactive searching and matching case improvements.
+ − 124 - Incremental search will now highlight all visible matches.
+ − 125 - Interactive searches always respect uppercase characters.
+ − 126 -- Rectangle functions rewritten to avoid inserting extra spaces.
+ − 127 -- New command `kill-entire-line' that always kills the entire line.
+ − 128 -- Default values correctly stored in minibuffer histories.
+ − 129 -- You can now create "indirect buffers", like in GNU Emacs.
+ − 130 -- Pixel-based scrolling has been implemented.
+ − 131 -- Operation progress can be displayed using graphical widgets.
+ − 132 -- User names following a tilde can now be completed at file name prompts.
+ − 133 -- XEmacs can now play sound using Enlightenment Sound Daemon (ESD).
+ − 134 -- X-Face support is now available under MS Windows.
+ − 135 -- The PostgreSQL Relational Database Management System is now supported.
+ − 136 -- Indentation no longer indents comments that begin at column zero.
+ − 137 -- Face and variable settings can have comments in Customize.
+ − 138 -- New locations for early package hierarchies.
+ − 139 -- The `auto-save' library has been greatly improved.
+ − 140 -- New variable `mswindows-alt-by-itself-activates-menu'.
+ − 141 -- Other init-file-related changes.
+ − 142 - Init file in your home directory may be called `.emacs.el'.
+ − 143 - New command-line switches -user-init-file and -user-init-directory.
+ − 144 -- Etags changes.
+ − 145 - In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
+ − 146 - New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex.
+ − 147 - New option --declarations, for C-type languages.
+ − 148 - In C++, tags are created for "operator".
+ − 149 - Ada now supported.
+ − 150 - In Fortran, procedure is no longer tagged.
+ − 151 - In Java, tags are created for "interface".
+ − 152 - In Lisp, def-type constructs are now tagged.
+ − 153 - In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables.
+ − 154 - Python now supported.
+ − 155 - New file extensions recognized: .ss, .pdb, .psw.
+ − 156
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+ − 157 ** The delete key now deletes forward by default.
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+ − 158
440
+ − 159 This is regulated by the variable `delete-key-deletes-forward', which
+ − 160 now defaults to t. `delete-key-deletes-forward' takes effect only on
+ − 161 the systems that offer both a backspace and a delete key. If set to
+ − 162 nil, the key labeled "Delete" will always delete backward. If set to
+ − 163 non-nil, the "Delete" key will delete forward, except on keyboards
479
+ − 164 where a "Backspace" key is not provided (e.g. old DEC keyboards).
428
+ − 165
+ − 166 Unless our implementation has bugs, the only reason why you would want
+ − 167 to set `delete-key-deletes-forward' to nil is if you want to use the
+ − 168 Delete key to delete backwards, despite the presence (according to
+ − 169 Xlib) of a BackSpace key on the keyboard.
+ − 170
479
+ − 171 ** Shifted motion keys now select text by default.
+ − 172
+ − 173 You can turn this off by setting `shifted-motion-keys-select-region'
+ − 174 to nil. This works based off of particular keys, not particular
+ − 175 commands: Thus, the arrow keys will normally trigger selection when
+ − 176 the Shift key is held down regardless of their bindings, and non-arrow
+ − 177 keys with the same bindings (e.g. C-f) will not work this way. You
+ − 178 can control which keys trigger shifted motion using
+ − 179 `motion-keys-for-shifted-motion'. See also
+ − 180 `unshifted-motion-keys-deselect-region'.
+ − 181
464
+ − 182 ** You can now build XEmacs with support for GTK+ widget set.
+ − 183
+ − 184 XEmacs built that way uses GTK+ to draw menubars, scrollbars, and
+ − 185 other GUI components, as well GDK for drawing text, choosing fonts,
+ − 186 allocating colors, etc. Additionally, GTK-XEmacs supports Lisp
+ − 187 functions for writing your own GTK programs in Emacs Lisp!
+ − 188
+ − 189 To use this, build XEmacs with the `--with-gtk' configure flag. (Of
+ − 190 course, you'll need to have the GTK+ libraries and header files on the
+ − 191 system.) Gnome widgets and functionality are supported where
+ − 192 available, and can be turned off.
+ − 193
479
+ − 194 ** ~/.xemacs/init.el is now the preferred location for the init file.
+ − 195
+ − 196 *** XEmacs now supports a `~/.xemacs/init.el' startup file.
+ − 197 If it exists, XEmacs will prefer it over `.emacs' and `.emacs.el'.
+ − 198 The file may be byte-compiled as `~/.xemacs/init.elc'.
+ − 199
+ − 200 If present, the `~/.xemacs/' directory may contain startup files for
+ − 201 XEmacs packages that support it.
+ − 202
+ − 203 The first time you start up XEmacs, it will ask you if you would like
+ − 204 to migrate your `.emacs' to the new location. (Your custom settings
+ − 205 will also be moved, to `~/.xemacs/custom.el' -- see below.) If so, you
+ − 206 will also be asked whether you would like to create a compatibility
+ − 207 `.emacs' for backward compatibility with previous versions of XEmacs
+ − 208 and with GNU Emacs. (This compatibility `.emacs' simply loads the new
+ − 209 init and custom files.) Doing this is generally a good idea -- new
+ − 210 versions of XEmacs will prefer `~/.xemacs/init.el' over `~/.emacs' in
+ − 211 any case.
+ − 212
+ − 213 You can manually migrate at any time with `migrate-user-init-file',
+ − 214 and undo any migration with `unmigrate-user-init-file'. The function
+ − 215 `create-compatibility-dot-emacs' also lets you manually create a
+ − 216 compatibility `.emacs'.
+ − 217
+ − 218 NOTE: Under MS Windows, your home directory (i.e. the directory named
+ − 219 `~') is specified by the HOME environment variable, and defaults to
+ − 220 C:\. To set this variable, modify AUTOEXEC.BAT under Windows 95/98,
+ − 221 or select Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environment Variables...
+ − 222 under Windows NT/2000.
+ − 223
+ − 224 *** Custom file will move to ~/.xemacs/custom.el.
+ − 225
+ − 226 Whereas customize settings were formerly stored in the regular init
+ − 227 file, XEmacs now prefers them to be in a separate file
+ − 228 `~/.xemacs/custom.el', completely under automatic control. This
+ − 229 change goes with the migration of the init file, and XEmacs offers
+ − 230 automatic migration upon startup.
+ − 231
+ − 232 ** Much-improved sample init.el, showing how to use many useful features.
+ − 233
+ − 234 The sample init file, located in the `etc/' directory of the XEmacs
+ − 235 installation, has been renamed from `sample.emacs' to `sample.init.el',
+ − 236 and pretty much rewritten from scratch. (You can view it by selecting
+ − 237 the menu item Help->Samples->Sample init.el.) Many of the most-useful
+ − 238 optional features in XEmacs have been enabled, and other features that
+ − 239 are useful but may be annoying to some are present but commented out.
+ − 240 There is also extensive documentation on how to add your own
+ − 241 improvements to the init file and where to find more documentation
+ − 242 elsewhere in XEmacs. The file has been specifically designed so that
+ − 243 most people can simply make it their own init file by copying it to
+ − 244 ~/.xemacs/init.el, and they will be satisfied with the results.
+ − 245
+ − 246 ** XEmacs support for menu accelerators has been much improved.
442
+ − 247
479
+ − 248 It now works properly under MS Windows, for example. To enable
+ − 249 accelerators, set `menu-accelerator-enabled' to `menu-force'. Menus
+ − 250 now have accelerators by default, currently on the first letter of the
+ − 251 menu item unless another letter was indicated as the accelerator using
+ − 252 %_ in the menu string. These %_ specifications are automatically
+ − 253 removed when displaying the menu item, and are handled correctly in
+ − 254 functions such as `normalize-menu-item-name'. Some auto-generated
+ − 255 menus will have accelerators added dynamically, using numbers 1-9 and
+ − 256 letters; to add this feature yourself, use the Lisp command
+ − 257 `submenu-generate-accelerator-spec' in a menu filter. The feature
+ − 258 `menu-accelerator-support' has been added so that packages can check
+ − 259 whether this support exists.
+ − 260
+ − 261 ** Default menubar improvements.
+ − 262
+ − 263 *** Default menubar has many new commands and better organization.
+ − 264
+ − 265 The default menubar has been extensively reorganized. Many more
+ − 266 commands are available, and they are more logically organized. The
+ − 267 Options menu, in particular, has been significantly expanded, and almost
+ − 268 everything on the new Cmds menu is new. (Much of the useful
+ − 269 functionality from the `big-menubar' package has been imported.)
+ − 270
+ − 271 *** The font-menu is now available under MS Windows.
+ − 272
+ − 273 ** Dialog box improvements, including a real file dialog box.
+ − 274
+ − 275 *** XEmacs now has a proper file dialog box under MS Windows (and GTK)!
+ − 276 This will appear whenever you select a menu item that requires a file
+ − 277 as an argument.
+ − 278
+ − 279 *** The old clunky file dialog box is improved.
+ − 280 The in-buffer file dialog box (visible on non-MS-Windows, non-GTK
+ − 281 systems) is still clunky but has had many improvements to make it work
+ − 282 significantly better.
+ − 283
+ − 284 *** Keyboard traversal now works correctly in MS Windows dialog boxes.
+ − 285
+ − 286 *** There is a Search dialog box available from Edit->Find...
+ − 287 However, it's very experimental and needs a lot of work.
+ − 288
+ − 289 ** New buffer tabs.
+ − 290
+ − 291 You can now use buffer tabs to switch between buffers.
+ − 292
+ − 293 The tabs are located between the toolbar and the uppermost window, in
+ − 294 a location called the "gutter". If you dislike the buffer tabs, you can
+ − 295 disable them using the menu item `Options->Display->Buffers Tab Visible'
+ − 296 by customizing `gutter-buffers-tab-visible-p', or by placing this in
+ − 297 your .xemacs/init.el:
+ − 298
+ − 299 (custom-set-variables '(gutter-buffers-tab-visible-p nil))
+ − 300
+ − 301 You can change the location of the gutter using the menu item
+ − 302 `Options->Display->Default Gutter Location' or with (e.g.)
+ − 303
+ − 304 (custom-set-variables '(default-gutter-position 'left))
+ − 305
+ − 306 However, currently only MS Windows supports tab widgets with
+ − 307 orientations other than vertical, and it doesn't currently support
+ − 308 gutters on the bottom of the frame.
+ − 309
+ − 310 ** There is a new MS Windows installer, netinstall, ported from Cygwin.
+ − 311
+ − 312 Nearly complete automation of the XEmacs install process from
+ − 313 ftp.xemacs.org. Includes selection of Lisp packages to install, etc.
442
+ − 314
479
+ − 315 ** The subprocess quote-handling mechanism under Windows is much improved.
+ − 316
+ − 317 Specifically, the quote-handling mechanism has been completely rewritten,
+ − 318 and you should now be able to use single or double quotes to quote arguments
+ − 319 just like under Unix, and expect to get correct results regardless of the
+ − 320 shell you are using (e.g. CMD.EXE, bash from Cygwin, etc.). For example,
+ − 321 the following command:
+ − 322
+ − 323 M-x grep '<<<<<<<' *.c
+ − 324
+ − 325 should work as intended.
+ − 326
+ − 327 ** Printing support now available under MS Windows.
+ − 328
+ − 329 The File->Print... menu item pretty-prints using the standard MS
+ − 330 Windows printing facilities. Unfortunately it's still rather
+ − 331 experimental. There is a separate `msprinter' device tag for MS
+ − 332 Windows printers, and so you can control the way that faces appear on
+ − 333 the printer by using this tag to specify device-specific face
+ − 334 settings.
+ − 335
+ − 336 ** Selection improvements.
+ − 337
+ − 338 *** Kill and yank now interact with the clipboard under Windows.
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+ − 339
479
+ − 340 This was done by changing the default value of `interprogram-cut-function'
+ − 341 and `interprogram-paste-function'. You can get the old behavior by
+ − 342 setting these to nil, and there is an option on the options menu to do
+ − 343 this.
+ − 344
+ − 345 *** MS Windows support for selection is now much more robust.
+ − 346
+ − 347 Generally selection should now do what you would expect under
+ − 348 MS Windows: the middle mouse button will paste your current selection
+ − 349 or the clipboard; conversions from different types of selection to the
+ − 350 clipboard can be made; the kill-ring and friends will be updated as
+ − 351 per X.
+ − 352
+ − 353 The only thing selection doesn't do is set the clipboard automatically
+ − 354 as this would break the MS Windows model. If you want this behavior
+ − 355 then set `selection-sets-clipboard' to t.
+ − 356
+ − 357 *** Motif selection support is now more correct (but slower).
+ − 358
+ − 359 Changes have been made to allow correct operation of cut/copy/paste
+ − 360 operations between native widgets and XEmacs buffers. However, this
+ − 361 can lead to a lot of X traffic which slows down the performance of
+ − 362 `C-k'. If you want the old behaviour then set
+ − 363 `x-selection-strict-motif-ownership' to nil.
+ − 364
+ − 365 ** Mail spool locking now works correctly.
464
+ − 366
479
+ − 367 XEmacs has always come with a little auxiliary program, movemail,
+ − 368 which moves mail out of the system's spool area into user storage. To
+ − 369 coordinate between XEmacs, the mail delivery agent, and other mail
+ − 370 user agents, movemail needs to properly lock the spool file before
+ − 371 moving it. Movemail now correctly respects the --mail-locking option
+ − 372 to configure. Moreover, movemail's locking behavior can be specified
+ − 373 at run-time, via a new command-line option -m to movemail, or through
+ − 374 the environment variable EMACSLOCKMETHOD.
+ − 375
+ − 376 When installing XEmacs, make sure you configure it according to your
+ − 377 environment's mail spool locking conventions. When you're using a
+ − 378 binary kit, set the `mail-lock-method' variable at startup, or the
+ − 379 EMACSLOCKMETHOD environment variable.
+ − 380
+ − 381 ** International support changes.
+ − 382
+ − 383 *** The default coding-priority-list is now safer.
+ − 384
+ − 385 This means that if you have no language environment set, Mule no
+ − 386 longer automatically recognizes ISO 2022 escapes in your files. This
+ − 387 makes editing binary files safe.
+ − 388
+ − 389 *** International keysyms are now supported under X.
+ − 390
+ − 391 This means that XEmacs running under Mule will automatically recognize
+ − 392 the keysym `scaron' to be the lower-case `s' with caron in the Latin 2
+ − 393 character set. (Specifically, it will bind the keysym to
+ − 394 `self-insert' and augment its `ascii-character' property.) This is
+ − 395 very useful with XFree under European locales as shipped by recent
+ − 396 Linux distributions. If XEmacs is compiled without Mule support, the
+ − 397 feature still works, but it is unaware of different character sets --
+ − 398 it unconditionally sets the `ascii-character' property to values in
+ − 399 the [160, 256) range.
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+ − 400
479
+ − 401 *** MS Windows 1251 code page now supported.
+ − 402
+ − 403 It's available as coding system `windows-1251'.
+ − 404
+ − 405 *** Czech, Thai, Cyrillic-KOI8, Vietnamese, Ethiopic now supported.
+ − 406
+ − 407 *** Proper support for words in Latin 3 and Latin 4.
+ − 408
+ − 409 The appropriate characters in Latin 3 and Latin 4 character sets are
+ − 410 correctly defined as words.
+ − 411
+ − 412 ** Help buffers contain hyperlinks, and other changes.
+ − 413
+ − 414 The help buffers created by C-h commands now contain hyperlinks to
+ − 415 other commands, functions and variables mentioned in the documentation.
+ − 416 Use button2 to follow a link. Use button3 to bring up a context menu
+ − 417 that lets you follow the link, find the source for the item, do a tag
+ − 418 search, etc. The buffers are also syntax-highlighted.
+ − 419
+ − 420 Help functions (e.g. `C-h f') now know how to print macro argument
+ − 421 lists. If your macro definition included an argument list for the sake
+ − 422 of help output, you no longer need to do that.
+ − 423
+ − 424 ** The modeline's text is now scrollable.
+ − 425
+ − 426 This is controlled by the variable `modeline-scrolling-method', which
+ − 427 you need to set to a non-nil value. You can also choose scrolling
+ − 428 types; see the docstring of `modeline-scrolling-method' for more
+ − 429 information.
+ − 430
+ − 431 ** The mouse wheel under MS Windows now functions correctly.
+ − 432
+ − 433 It scrolls the XEmacs window under the pointer, not the selected
+ − 434 window.
442
+ − 435
428
+ − 436 ** Interactive searching and matching case improvements.
+ − 437
479
+ − 438 *** Incremental search will now highlight all visible matches.
+ − 439
+ − 440 This makes it easier to anticipate where consecutive C-s or C-r will
+ − 441 place the point. If you want to disable the feature, set
+ − 442 `isearch-highlight-all-matches' to nil.
+ − 443
+ − 444 *** Interactive searches always respect uppercase characters.
+ − 445
+ − 446 Case sensitiveness in searching operations is normally controlled
+ − 447 by the variable `case-fold-search' (if non-nil, case is ignored while
428
+ − 448 searching). This mechanism has now been slightly improved for
+ − 449 interactive searches: if the search string (or regexp) contains
+ − 450 uppercase characters, the searching is forced to be case-sensitive,
+ − 451 `case-fold-search'.
+ − 452
+ − 453 The new behavior affects all functions performing interactive
+ − 454 searches, like `zap-to-char', `list-matching-lines', `tags-search'
+ − 455 etc. The incremental search facility has always behaved that way.
+ − 456
479
+ − 457 ** Rectangle functions rewritten to avoid inserting extra spaces.
442
+ − 458
479
+ − 459 The rectangle functions have been almost completely rewritten in
428
+ − 460 order to avoid inserting undesirable spaces, notably at the end of
+ − 461 lines. Two typical examples of the old behavior were
+ − 462 `string-rectangle', which filled all lines up to the right side of the
+ − 463 rectangle, and `clear-rectangle', which filled even empty lines up to
+ − 464 the left side. All functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting
+ − 465 unwanted spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the
+ − 466 old way.
+ − 467
442
+ − 468 Also, the behavior of `string-rectangle' is now compliant with
+ − 469 `pending-delete-mode': if this mode is active, then the string
+ − 470 replaces the region rectangle. Otherwise, the command does not delete
+ − 471 or overwrite any existing text. For those who want that feature but do
+ − 472 not use pending-delete-mode, a new function, `replace-rectangle', is
686
+ − 473 available, and bound to `C-x r p'.
442
+ − 474
428
+ − 475 As a side effect, the FORCE argument to `move-to-column' now
+ − 476 understands the special value `coerce', which means that the line
+ − 477 should not be filled if it is too short to reach the desired column.
+ − 478
479
+ − 479 ** New command `kill-entire-line' that always kills the entire line.
+ − 480
+ − 481 This kills the entire line at point, regardless of whether the point
+ − 482 is at the beginning of line, and regardless of the setting of
+ − 483 `kill-whole-line'.
+ − 484
+ − 485 ** Default values correctly stored in minibuffer histories.
428
+ − 486
479
+ − 487 When you press RET at a minibuffer prompt that provides a default
+ − 488 value, the value is stored in history instead of an empty line. Also,
+ − 489 you can now edit the default value by pressing the down arrow,
+ − 490 accessing the logical "future" value. Not all minibuffer prompts have
+ − 491 yet been converted to support this feature.
428
+ − 492
479
+ − 493 ** You can now create "indirect buffers", like in GNU Emacs.
+ − 494
+ − 495 An indirect buffer shares its text with another buffer ("base
+ − 496 buffer"), but has its own major mode, local variables, extents, and
+ − 497 narrowing. An indirect buffer has a name of its own, distinct from
+ − 498 those of the base buffer and all other buffers. An indirect buffer
+ − 499 cannot itself be visiting a file (though its base buffer can be).
+ − 500 The base buffer cannot itself be indirect.
428
+ − 501
+ − 502 Use (make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER NAME) to make an indirect buffer
+ − 503 named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER. If BASE-BUFFER is itself an
+ − 504 indirect buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new
+ − 505 buffer.
+ − 506
+ − 507 You can make an indirect buffer current, or switch to it in a window,
+ − 508 just as you would a non-indirect buffer.
+ − 509
+ − 510 The function `buffer-base-buffer' returns a buffer's base buffer or
+ − 511 nil, if given an ordinary (non-indirect) buffer. The function
+ − 512 `buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect children of
+ − 513 a base buffer.
+ − 514
479
+ − 515 ** Pixel-based scrolling has been implemented.
+ − 516 By default this will attempt to scroll in increments equal to the
+ − 517 height of the default face. Set `window-pixel-scroll-increment' to
+ − 518 modify this behavior.
+ − 519
+ − 520 ** Operation progress can be displayed using graphical widgets.
+ − 521 See `progress-feedback' for details. This support has been switched
+ − 522 on by default for font-lock and some web browsing functions. If you
+ − 523 do not like this behavior, set `progress-feedback-use-echo-area' to
+ − 524 nil.
+ − 525
+ − 526 ** User names following a tilde can now be completed at file name prompts.
+ − 527 e.g. `C-x C-f ~hni<TAB>' will complete to `~hniksic/'. To make this
+ − 528 operation faster, a cache of user names is maintained internally.
428
+ − 529
+ − 530 The new primitives available for this purpose are functions named
+ − 531 `user-name-completion' and `user-name-all-completions'.
+ − 532
+ − 533 ** XEmacs can now play sound using Enlightenment Sound Daemon (ESD).
+ − 534 It will try NAS first, then ESD, then playing native sound directly.
+ − 535
479
+ − 536 ** X-Face support is now available under MS Windows.
+ − 537 If an X-Face library built under MS Windows is available then XEmacs
428
+ − 538 will use this at build time.
+ − 539
479
+ − 540 ** The PostgreSQL Relational Database Management System is now supported.
+ − 541 It is now possible to build XEmacs so that the programming interface
+ − 542 to the PostgreSQL RDBMS (libpq) is available in XEmacs Lisp.
+ − 543 Supported versions of PostgreSQL are 6.5.3 (earlier versions may work,
+ − 544 but have not been tested) and 7.0-beta1.
438
+ − 545
464
+ − 546 ** Indentation no longer indents comments that begin at column zero.
+ − 547 This makes it easy to deal with commented out regions of code.
+ − 548
479
+ − 549 ** Face and variable settings can have comments in Customize.
+ − 550 Customize now supports adding comments about your face and variable
+ − 551 settings using a new menu entry. Comments for variables can also be
+ − 552 assigned by calling `customize-set-(value|variable)' with a prefix
+ − 553 argument.
+ − 554
+ − 555 ** New locations for early package hierarchies.
+ − 556 XEmacs now locates the early package hierarchies at
+ − 557 ~/.xemacs/mule-packages/ and ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages/. Previously,
+ − 558 the early packages were located in ~/.xemacs/.
464
+ − 559
479
+ − 560 ** The `auto-save' library has been greatly improved.
+ − 561 (This lets you group all your auto-save files into one directory, and
+ − 562 is provided standardly with XEmacs. See `etc/sample.init.el',
+ − 563 available on the Help menu, for more info on how to set it up.)
+ − 564 Specifically, it now works under MS Windows, and it uses a completely
+ − 565 reversible encoding (basically quoted-printable), so that all
+ − 566 filenames (as well as non-filename buffers) are successfully handled
+ − 567 regardless of any special characters in their names.
464
+ − 568
479
+ − 569 ** New variable `mswindows-alt-by-itself-activates-menu'.
+ − 570 If you set this variable to nil then pressing and releasing the Alt
+ − 571 key under MS Windows will no longer activate the menubar. The default
+ − 572 is t. This is not to be confused with `menu-accelerator-enabled',
+ − 573 which enables the use of Alt+<Letter> accelerators to invoke the
+ − 574 menus.
+ − 575
+ − 576 ** Other init-file-related changes.
464
+ − 577
+ − 578 *** Init file in your home directory may be called `.emacs.el'.
442
+ − 579
464
+ − 580 Like in GNU Emacs 20.4 and on, you can now name the XEmacs init file
+ − 581 located in your home directory `.emacs.el'. Formerly the name had to
+ − 582 be `.emacs'. If you use the name `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile
+ − 583 the file in the usual way.
+ − 584
+ − 585 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file is the one
+ − 586 that is used.
442
+ − 587
464
+ − 588 *** New command-line switches -user-init-file and -user-init-directory.
479
+ − 589
464
+ − 590 These can be used to specify alternate locations for what is normally
+ − 591 ~/.emacs and ~/.xemacs.
442
+ − 592
464
+ − 593 Moreover, the `-user <user>' command-line option (which used to only
+ − 594 work in unpredictable ways) is now equivalent to `-user-init-file
+ − 595 ~<user>/.xemacs/init.el -user-init-directory ~<user>/.xemacs', or
+ − 596 `-user-init-file ~<user>/.emacs -user-init-directory ~<user>/.xemacs',
+ − 597 whichever init file comes first.
+ − 598
428
+ − 599 ** Etags changes.
+ − 600
+ − 601 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
+ − 602
479
+ − 603 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex.
+ − 604 It is now possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the
+ − 605 regexp with {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags
+ − 606 --help' prints out. This feature is useful especially for regex
+ − 607 files, where each line contains a regular expression. The manual
+ − 608 contains details.
428
+ − 609
479
+ − 610 *** New option --declarations, for C-type languages.
+ − 611 In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
428
+ − 612 declarations when given the --declarations option.
+ − 613
479
+ − 614 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator".
+ − 615 The tags have the form "operator+", without spaces between the
+ − 616 keyword and the operator.
428
+ − 617
479
+ − 618 *** Ada now supported.
+ − 619 Tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and types.
428
+ − 620
464
+ − 621 *** In Fortran, procedure is no longer tagged.
428
+ − 622
+ − 623 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
+ − 624
479
+ − 625 *** In Lisp, def-type constructs are now tagged.
+ − 626 This includes "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs.
+ − 627
+ − 628 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables.
+ − 629 my and local variables are tagged.
428
+ − 630
479
+ − 631 *** Python now supported.
+ − 632 def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
428
+ − 633
479
+ − 634 *** New file extensions recognized: .ss, .pdb, .psw.
+ − 635 .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
428
+ − 636 for PSWrap.
+ − 637
+ − 638
464
+ − 639 * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.4
428
+ − 640 ==========================================
+ − 641
440
+ − 642 ** A new portable dumper is available for beta testing.
430
+ − 643
+ − 644 Olivier Galibert has written a portable dumper for XEmacs, based on
464
+ − 645 initial work by Kyle Jones. To perform even the most basic editor,
+ − 646 XEmacs requires some amount of Lisp code to be loaded. To avoid
+ − 647 repeating the expensive loading process at every startup, XEmacs is
+ − 648 built in a special way. Its C sources link into an executable called
+ − 649 `temacs', which loads the bootstrap Lisp code and uses a special
+ − 650 "unexec" call to dump the resulting memory image into a proper
+ − 651 `xemacs' executable on disk. The unexec() process is hard to
432
+ − 652 implement correctly and makes XEmacs very hard to port to new
+ − 653 operating systems, or even to new releases of old systems.
430
+ − 654
464
+ − 655 The new portable dumper uses a different approach to dumping: instead
+ − 656 of dumping full-fledged executable, it only dumps out the initialized
430
+ − 657 data structures (both Lisp and C) into an external file. A normally
464
+ − 658 running XEmacs only needs to mmap that file and relocate a bit to get
+ − 659 to the initialized data. In that scheme, there is no difference
430
+ − 660 between `temacs' and `xemacs'.
+ − 661
464
+ − 662 Unfortunately, the portable dumper has not been completely finished
+ − 663 for this release, and will not be used by default. However, if you
+ − 664 wish to experiment with it, or if you need to compile XEmacs on a new
+ − 665 and unsupported platform, you can test it by configuring XEmacs with
+ − 666 `--pdump' flag.
440
+ − 667
428
+ − 668 ** Much effort has been invested to make XEmacs Lisp faster:
+ − 669
+ − 670 *** Many basic lisp operations are now faster.
+ − 671 This is especially the case when running a Mule-enabled XEmacs.
+ − 672
+ − 673 A general overhaul of the lisp engine should produce a speedup of 1.4
464
+ − 674 in a non-Mule XEmacs, and 2.1 in a Mule XEmacs. These numbers were
428
+ − 675 obtained running `(byte-compile "simple.el")', which should be a
+ − 676 pretty typical test of "pure" Lisp.
+ − 677
+ − 678 *** Lisp hash tables have been re-implemented. The Common Lisp style
+ − 679 hash table interface has been made standard, and moved from cl.el into
+ − 680 fast C code (See the section on hash tables in the XEmacs Lisp
+ − 681 Reference). A speedup factor of 3 can be expected with code that
+ − 682 makes intensive use of hash tables.
+ − 683
+ − 684 *** The garbage collector has been tuned, leading to a speedup of
+ − 685 1.16.
+ − 686
464
+ − 687 *** The byte-compiler and the byte-optimizer have been tuned to
+ − 688 produce better code in many small ways.
+ − 689
428
+ − 690 *** The family of functions that iterate over lists, like `memq', and
+ − 691 `rassq', have been made a little faster (typically 1.3).
+ − 692
+ − 693 *** Lisp function calls are faster, by approximately a factor of two.
+ − 694 However, defining inline functions (via defsubst) still makes sense
+ − 695 for tight loops.
+ − 696
+ − 697 *** Finally, a few functions have had dramatic performance
+ − 698 improvements. For example, `(last long-list)' is now 30 times faster.
+ − 699
+ − 700 Of course, your mileage will vary.
+ − 701
+ − 702 Many operations do not see any improvement. Surprisingly, running
+ − 703 (font-lock-fontify-buffer) does not use the Lisp engine much at all.
+ − 704 Speeding up your favorite slow operation is an excellent project to
+ − 705 improve XEmacs. Don't forget to profile!
+ − 706
430
+ − 707 ** Native widgets can be displayed in buffers.
+ − 708
+ − 709 The glyph system has been extended to allow the display of glyphs that
+ − 710 are implemented as native window-system widgets. Thus you can embed
+ − 711 buttons, scrollbars, combo boxes, edit fields and progress gauges in a
+ − 712 buffer. As a side effect subwindow support now works once again.
+ − 713
440
+ − 714 All of this is still fairly experimental and there is no
442
+ − 715 documentation. The current APIs might change in a future version of
479
+ − 716 XEmacs. Some widgets are only available under MS Windows. See the
440
+ − 717 file glyphs-test.el in the XEmacs src distribution for examples of
+ − 718 usage.
430
+ − 719
440
+ − 720 The buffers-tab functionality and progress gauge have been implemented
+ − 721 using this feature.
430
+ − 722
464
+ − 723 ** Case translation now supports international characters.
+ − 724
+ − 725 *** Instead of being lists of 256-character strings, case tables are
+ − 726 now opaque objects. The interface to access them is almost the same,
+ − 727 except it now works for international characters, and you can set the
+ − 728 case pairs using `put-case-table-pair'. `set-case-table' and friends
+ − 729 still support the old list/string based interface for backward
+ − 730 compatibility.
+ − 731
+ − 732 *** As a consequence of this change, functions `downcase' and `upcase'
+ − 733 as well as all the case-transformation commands now work with
+ − 734 non-ASCII characters. Built-in tables cover all the Latin character
+ − 735 sets that we support. If your language has a distinction between
+ − 736 upper and lower case that is not handled by XEmacs/Mule, please let us
+ − 737 know.
+ − 738
+ − 739 *** The code that implements case-insensitive search has been modified
+ − 740 to respect the case table settings. This also applies to regexp
+ − 741 search.
+ − 742
479
+ − 743 ** Syntax tables may now be specified for a part of a buffer by
+ − 744 attaching the `syntax-table' property to an extent. For compatibility
+ − 745 with GNU Emacs, you may use the text-property interface to achieve the
+ − 746 same result.
+ − 747
464
+ − 748 ** Values of variables `user-init-file' and `user-init-directory' are
+ − 749 now absolute file/directory names. Previously, both variables used to
+ − 750 be relative to `(concat "~" init-file-user)'. This turned out to be
+ − 751 too complicated for most packages (and some core Lisp files) to use
+ − 752 correctly. Also, the `init-file-user' variable has been obsoleted in
+ − 753 the process.
440
+ − 754
442
+ − 755 The user-visible options like `-u' have not changed their behavior.
430
+ − 756
428
+ − 757 ** XEmacs finally has an automated test suite!
+ − 758 Although this is not yet very sophisticated, it is already responsible
+ − 759 for several important bug fixes in XEmacs. To try it out, simply use
+ − 760 the makefile target `make check' after building XEmacs.
+ − 761
+ − 762 ** Hash tables have been reimplemented.
+ − 763 As was pointed out above, the standard interface to hash tables is now
+ − 764 the Common Lisp interface, as described in Common Lisp, the Language
+ − 765 (CLtL2, by Steele). The older interface (functions with names
+ − 766 containing the phrase `hashtable') will continue to work, but the
+ − 767 preferred interface now has names containing the phrase `hash-table'.
+ − 768
+ − 769 Here's the executive overview: create hash tables using
+ − 770 make-hash-table, and use gethash, puthash, remhash, maphash and
+ − 771 clrhash to manipulate entries in the hash table. See the (updated)
+ − 772 Lisp Reference Manual for details.
+ − 773
+ − 774 ** Lisp code handles circular lists much more robustly.
+ − 775 Many basic lisp functions used to loop forever when given a circular
+ − 776 list, expecting you to C-g (quit) out of the loop. Now this is more
+ − 777 likely to trigger a `circular-list' error. Printing a circular list
+ − 778 now results in something like this:
+ − 779
+ − 780 (let ((x (cons 'foo 'foo)))
+ − 781 (setcdr x x)
+ − 782 x)
+ − 783 => (foo ... <circular list>)
+ − 784
+ − 785 An extra bonus is that checking for circularities is not just
+ − 786 friendlier, but actually faster than checking for C-g.
+ − 787
430
+ − 788 ** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
+ − 789 `base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
+ − 790 and `base64-decode-string'.
428
+ − 791
440
+ − 792 ** The functions `read-string', `read-expression', `eval-minibuffer',
+ − 793 `read-variable', `read-command', `read-function', `read-number',
+ − 794 `read-shell-command', `read-from-minibuffer', and `completing-read'
+ − 795 now take an additional argument which specifies the default value. If
+ − 796 this argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used
+ − 797 in two ways:
+ − 798
464
+ − 799 * It is returned if the user enters empty input.
+ − 800 * It is available as the logical "future" entry, by pressing the down
+ − 801 arrow.
440
+ − 802
+ − 803 ** LDAP changes.
+ − 804
+ − 805 *** The LDAP interface now consists of two layers, a low-level layer
+ − 806 that closely matches the LDAP C API, and a more convenient
+ − 807 higher-level set of functions.
+ − 808
+ − 809 *** The low-level functions that used to be named *-internal are now
+ − 810 named more simply: `ldap-open', `ldap-close', `ldap-search-basic',
+ − 811 `ldap-add', and `ldap-modify'. They should be used directly for very
+ − 812 specific purposes (such as multiple operations on a connection) only.
+ − 813
+ − 814 *** The higher-level functions provide a more convenient way to access
+ − 815 LDAP directories hiding the subtleties of handling the connection,
+ − 816 translating arguments and ensuring compliance with LDAP
+ − 817 internationalization rules and formats (currently partly implemented
+ − 818 only.) This layer provides atomic operations for searches,
+ − 819 modification, addition and deletion of multiple entries at once:
+ − 820 `ldap-search-entries', `ldap-add-entries', `ldap-delete-entries', and
+ − 821 `ldap-modify-entries'.
+ − 822
+ − 823 *** To maintain compatibility with previous code, the now obsolete
+ − 824 function `ldap-search' is now merely a wrapper that calls either
+ − 825 `ldap-search-basic' or `ldap-search-entries'. Please don't use the
+ − 826 `ldap-search' function in your new programs -- a direct call to one of
+ − 827 the two replacements is more efficient and unambiguous.
+ − 828
430
+ − 829 ** The arguments to `locate-file' are now more Lisp-like. As before,
+ − 830 the usage is:
428
+ − 831
+ − 832 (locate-file FILENAME PATH-LIST &optional SUFFIXES MODE)
+ − 833
+ − 834 Except that SUFFIXES are now a list of strings instead of a single,
+ − 835 colon-separated string. MODE is now a symbol or a list of symbols
+ − 836 (symbols `exists', `executable', `writable', and `readable' are
+ − 837 supported) instead of an integer code. See the documentation for
+ − 838 details. Of course, the old form is still accepted for backward
+ − 839 compatibility.
+ − 840
+ − 841 Several bugs in locate-file have been fixed, most notably its failure
+ − 842 to call expand-file-name on elements of PATH-LIST. Because of that
+ − 843 elements of load-path of the form "~/..." used to not work.
+ − 844 locate-file is now guaranteed to expand files during its course of
+ − 845 operation.
+ − 846
+ − 847 ** `translate-region' has been improved in several ways. Its TABLE
+ − 848 argument used to be a 256-character string. In addition to this, it
+ − 849 can now also be a vector or a char-table, which makes the function
464
+ − 850 useful for Mule, which it wasn't. If TABLE is a vector or a generic
428
+ − 851 char-table, you can map characters to strings instead of to other
+ − 852 characters. For instance:
+ − 853
+ − 854 (let ((table (make-char-table 'generic)))
+ − 855 (put-char-table ?a "the letter a" table)
+ − 856 (put-char-table ?b "" table)
+ − 857 (put-char-table ?c ?\n table)
+ − 858 (translate-region (point-min) (point-max) table))
+ − 859
430
+ − 860 ** The new form `ignore-file-errors', similar to `ignore-errors' may
+ − 861 be used as a short-hand for condition-case when you wish to ignore
+ − 862 file-related error. For example:
+ − 863
+ − 864 (ignore-file-errors (delete-file "foo"))
+ − 865
+ − 866 ** The first argument to `intern-soft' may now also be a symbol, like
+ − 867 with `unintern'. If given a symbol, `intern-soft' will look for that
+ − 868 exact symbol rather than for any string. This is useful when you want
+ − 869 to check whether a specific symbol is interned in an obarray, e.g.:
+ − 870
+ − 871 (intern "foo")
+ − 872 (intern-soft "foo")
+ − 873 => foo
+ − 874 (intern-soft (make-symbol "foo"))
+ − 875 => nil
+ − 876
428
+ − 877 ** The `keywordp' function now returns non-nil only on symbols
+ − 878 interned in the global obarray. For example:
+ − 879
+ − 880 (keywordp (intern ":foo" [0]))
+ − 881 => nil
+ − 882 (keywordp (intern ":foo")) ; The same as (keywordp :foo)
+ − 883 => t
+ − 884
442
+ − 885 This behavior is compatible with other code which treats symbols
428
+ − 886 beginning with colon as keywords only if they are interned in the
464
+ − 887 global obarray. `keywordp' used to wrongly return t in both above
+ − 888 cases.
+ − 889
+ − 890 ** The function `replace-in-string' has been rewritten to use
+ − 891 `replace-match'. This not only makes it much faster, but adds all the
+ − 892 features of `replace-match'.
428
+ − 893
442
+ − 894 ** New variables `this-command-properties' and
+ − 895 `last-command-properties' are now available for communication between
+ − 896 consecutive commands. Commands should use these to communicate with
+ − 897 the pre/post-command hooks, subsequent commands, wrapping commands,
+ − 898 etc. in preference to looking at and/or setting `this-command'.
+ − 899
+ − 900 ** New functions `add-one-shot-hook' and `add-local-one-shot-hook' make
+ − 901 it possible to add a "one-shot" hook, which is to say a hook that runs
+ − 902 only once, and automatically removes itself after the first time it
+ − 903 has run.
+ − 904
+ − 905 ** The descriptor that specifies the text of a menu item can now be an
464
+ − 906 evaluated expression. This makes it parallel with other descriptors,
+ − 907 which can also be expressions.
442
+ − 908
428
+ − 909
+ − 910 * Changes in XEmacs 21.0
+ − 911 ========================
+ − 912
+ − 913 ** XEmacs has been unbundled into constituent installable packages.
+ − 914 See the Info documentation under "Packages" for more information.
+ − 915 See the file `etc/PACKAGES' in the distribution for a partial list of
+ − 916 packages available at the time of the 21.0 release.
+ − 917
+ − 918 ** XEmacs is now supported under Microsoft Windows 95/98 and Windows
+ − 919 NT operating systems. For starters, look at the XEmacs on Windows FAQ
+ − 920 at <URL:http://jagor.srce.hr/~hniksic/xemacs-on-windows-faq.txt>. To
+ − 921 discuss Windows-specific issues, subscribe to the mailing list at
+ − 922 <xemacs-nt-request@xemacs.org>.
+ − 923
+ − 924 ** XEmacs will now use `XEmacs' as its application class if it finds
+ − 925 any `XEmacs' resources in the resource database. Otherwise, it will
+ − 926 continue to use the `Emacs' class.
+ − 927
+ − 928 ** The options menu has been ported to Custom.
+ − 929 This means that each entry in the options menu acts as if you had customized
+ − 930 the corresponding variable by hand. ### WARNING: there is currently no
+ − 931 upgrading function to help you port your old options settings to the new
+ − 932 format. Consequently, if you want to modify the options for XEmacs 21, you
+ − 933 will have to set them all again through the menu, and remove the code loading
+ − 934 .xemacs-options from your .emacs.
+ − 935
+ − 936 ** When the Zmacs region is active, `M-x query-replace' and the other
+ − 937 replace commands now operate on the region contents only.
+ − 938
+ − 939 ** XEmacs now is able to choose X visuals and use private colormaps.
+ − 940 The '-visual <visualStr>' command line option or the '.EmacsVisual'
+ − 941 Xresource controls which visual XEmacs will use, and
+ − 942 '-privateColormap' or '.privateColormap' will force XEmacs to create a
+ − 943 private colormap for use. The syntax for the visual string is
+ − 944 "<visual><bitdepth>" where <visual> is one of 'StaticColor',
+ − 945 'TrueColor', 'GrayScale', 'PseudoColor' or 'DirectColor' and
+ − 946 <bitdepth> is the appropriate number of bits per pixel. If an invalid
+ − 947 or non-supported combination is entered, XEmacs attempts to find a happy
+ − 948 medium. The X creation mechanism will then determine if it needs to
+ − 949 create a colormap for use, or the presence of the private flags will
+ − 950 force it to create it.
+ − 951
+ − 952 ** The `imenu' package has been ported to XEmacs and is available as a
+ − 953 package.
+ − 954
+ − 955 ** `echo-keystrokes' can now be a floating-point number, so that you
+ − 956 can set it to intervals shorter than one second.
+ − 957
+ − 958 (setq echo-keystrokes 0.1)
+ − 959
+ − 960 ** The new command `center-to-window-line' works like `recenter'
+ − 961 (bound to `C-l'), only it does not redisplay the whole display area.
+ − 962
+ − 963 ** The M-. command will now first search through exact tags matches,
+ − 964 and then through inexact matches, as one would expect.
+ − 965
+ − 966 ** The new variable `user-full-name' can be used to customize one's
+ − 967 name when using the Emacs mail and news reading facilities.
+ − 968
+ − 969 Normally, `user-full-name' is a function that returns the full name of
+ − 970 a user or UID, as specified by the system -- for instance,
+ − 971 (user-full-name "root") returns something like "Super-User". However,
+ − 972 when the function is called without arguments, it will return the
+ − 973 value of the `user-full-name' variable. The `user-full-name' variable
+ − 974 is initialized using the environment variable NAME and (failing that)
+ − 975 the user's system name.
+ − 976
+ − 977 The behavior of the `user-full-name' function with an argument
+ − 978 specified is unchanged.
+ − 979
+ − 980 ** The new command `M-x customize-changed-options' lets you customize
+ − 981 all the options whose default values have changed in recent Emacs
+ − 982 versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as argument,
+ − 983 and the command creates a customization buffer showing all the
+ − 984 customizable options whose default values were changed since that
+ − 985 version.
+ − 986
+ − 987 If you don't specify a particular version number argument, then the
+ − 988 customization buffer shows all the customizable options for which
+ − 989 Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
+ − 990
+ − 991 ** The new command `add-log-convert' can be used to convert the
+ − 992 old-style (pre-20.3) ChangeLog buffers to new style, for
+ − 993 consistency. A reminder: if you wish to revert to old-style
+ − 994 ChangeLogs instead, customize the value of `add-log-time-format'
+ − 995 variable.
+ − 996
+ − 997 ** The new command `zap-up-to-char' is now available. It is similar
+ − 998 to `zap-to-char', except that it does not delete the searched-for
+ − 999 character. It is not bound to a key by default.
+ − 1000
+ − 1001 ** You can now store a number into a register with `C-u NUMBER C-x r n'
+ − 1002 REG, increment it by INC with `C-u INC C-x r + REG' (to increment by
+ − 1003 one, omit C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with `C-x r g REG'.
+ − 1004 This is useful for writing keyboard macros.
+ − 1005
+ − 1006 ** The M-: command, when given a prefix argument, will now insert its
+ − 1007 result to the current buffer.
+ − 1008
+ − 1009 ** The `C-h c' command, when given a prefix argument, will now insert
+ − 1010 the message into the current buffer.
+ − 1011
+ − 1012 ** Horizontally split windows may now be dragged using the mouse.
+ − 1013 Because of this, the dividers between vertical windows are always
+ − 1014 visible. To turn it off, set `vertical-divider-always-visible-p' to
+ − 1015 nil.
+ − 1016
+ − 1017 ** XEmacs/Mule (internationalization) changes.
+ − 1018
+ − 1019 *** Mule support now works on TTY's. Use `set-terminal-coding-system'
+ − 1020 and `set-keyboard-coding-system' to specify the coding system of your
+ − 1021 display and keyboard.
+ − 1022
+ − 1023 *** Egg/SJ3 input method is now officially supported. Quail and
+ − 1024 Egg/Skk have been available through the generalized Leim since 20.3.
+ − 1025
+ − 1026 *** Localized Japanese menubars are available if XEmacs is built with
+ − 1027 XFONTSET and either the X11 libraries are built with X_LOCALE defined
+ − 1028 or the native C libraries support Japanese localization. This has
+ − 1029 been available since 20.3, only it hasn't been announced before.
+ − 1030
+ − 1031 ** Jamie Zawinski's `gdb-highlight' extension is now distributed with
+ − 1032 the `debug' package. gdb-highlight makes most objects printed in a
+ − 1033 gdb buffer be mouse-sensitive: as text shows up in the buffer, it is
+ − 1034 parsed, and objects which are recognized have context-sensitive
+ − 1035 commands attached to them. To use it, add the following to `.emacs':
+ − 1036
+ − 1037 (add-hook 'gdb-mode-hook (lambda () (require 'gdb-highlight)))
+ − 1038
+ − 1039 ** The package popper.el is now included in the edit-utils package.
+ − 1040 It has been greatly enhanced with respect to the one once included
+ − 1041 with the ilisp package and should work well under XEmacs 21.0.
+ − 1042
+ − 1043 ** Gnuserv changes
+ − 1044
+ − 1045 *** Like the old 'gnudoit' program. Gnuclient -batch now can read from stdin.
+ − 1046
+ − 1047 *** Gnuclient -batch no longer breaks off the output at the first LF.
+ − 1048
+ − 1049 ** C mode changes
+ − 1050
+ − 1051 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
+ − 1052 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
+ − 1053 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
+ − 1054 definition.
+ − 1055
+ − 1056 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
+ − 1057 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable setings and customizations.
+ − 1058 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu" style
+ − 1059 is still the default however.
+ − 1060
+ − 1061 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
+ − 1062
+ − 1063 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
+ − 1064 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
+ − 1065 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
+ − 1066
+ − 1067 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
+ − 1068 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
+ − 1069
+ − 1070 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
+ − 1071 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
+ − 1072
+ − 1073 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
+ − 1074 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
+ − 1075
+ − 1076 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
+ − 1077 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
+ − 1078
+ − 1079 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
+ − 1080 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
+ − 1081 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
+ − 1082 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
+ − 1083
+ − 1084 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
+ − 1085 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
+ − 1086 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
+ − 1087 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this makes a
+ − 1088 practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
+ − 1089
+ − 1090 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
+ − 1091 and is an alias for it.
+ − 1092
+ − 1093 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
+ − 1094 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
+ − 1095
+ − 1096 ** Changes to Gnus, the XEmacs newsreader.
+ − 1097
+ − 1098 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
+ − 1099 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
+ − 1100 Gnus manual for the full story.
+ − 1101
+ − 1102 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
+ − 1103 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
+ − 1104 group, which is created automatically.
+ − 1105
+ − 1106 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
+ − 1107 values.
+ − 1108
+ − 1109 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
+ − 1110
+ − 1111 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
+ − 1112 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
+ − 1113
+ − 1114 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
+ − 1115 `C-u C-c C-c'.
+ − 1116
+ − 1117 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
+ − 1118
+ − 1119 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
+ − 1120 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
+ − 1121
+ − 1122 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
+ − 1123
+ − 1124 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
+ − 1125 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
+ − 1126
+ − 1127 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
+ − 1128 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
+ − 1129
+ − 1130 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
+ − 1131 control over simplification.
+ − 1132
+ − 1133 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
+ − 1134
+ − 1135 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
+ − 1136 limit.
+ − 1137
+ − 1138 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
+ − 1139
+ − 1140 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
+ − 1141
+ − 1142 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
+ − 1143 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
+ − 1144 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
+ − 1145
+ − 1146 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
+ − 1147 `a' forces normal posting method.
+ − 1148
+ − 1149 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
+ − 1150 -- `W d'.
+ − 1151
+ − 1152 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
+ − 1153 to a non-nil value.
+ − 1154
+ − 1155 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
+ − 1156 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
+ − 1157
+ − 1158 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
+ − 1159 has been added.
+ − 1160
+ − 1161 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
+ − 1162
+ − 1163 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
+ − 1164
+ − 1165 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
+ − 1166 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
+ − 1167
+ − 1168 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
+ − 1169 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
+ − 1170
+ − 1171 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
+ − 1172
+ − 1173 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
+ − 1174 been added.
+ − 1175
+ − 1176 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
+ − 1177 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
+ − 1178
+ − 1179 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
+ − 1180 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
+ − 1181
+ − 1182 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
+ − 1183
+ − 1184 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
+ − 1185
+ − 1186 *** Byte-compilation of user-specs now works under XEmacs.
+ − 1187
+ − 1188 ** The `dir' files are no longer essential for functioning of the Info
+ − 1189 subsystem. If the `dir' file does not exist in an Info directory, the
+ − 1190 relevant information will be generated on-the-fly.
+ − 1191
+ − 1192 This behavior can be customized, look for `Info-auto-generate-directory'
+ − 1193 and `Info-save-auto-generated-dir' in the `info' customization group.
+ − 1194
+ − 1195
+ − 1196 * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.0
+ − 1197 ==========================================
+ − 1198
+ − 1199 ** It is now possible to build XEmacs with support for 31-bit Lisp
+ − 1200 integers (normally, Lisp integers are only 28 bits wide on 32-bit
+ − 1201 machines.) Configure with --use-minimal-tagbits to test. With this
+ − 1202 change, the maximum buffer size on 32-bit machines is increased from
+ − 1203 128M to 1G. This setting will be made default in a future XEmacs
+ − 1204 version.
+ − 1205
+ − 1206 ** Specifier changes.
+ − 1207
+ − 1208 *** When instantiating a specifier, the window locale now has a higher
+ − 1209 precedence than the buffer locale. This is because the window locale
+ − 1210 is more specific than the buffer locale.
+ − 1211
+ − 1212 *** The new macro `let-specifier' can be used to temporarily add
+ − 1213 specifications to specifiers. See the documentation for details.
+ − 1214
+ − 1215 *** The new specifiers `vertical-scrollbar-visible-p' and
+ − 1216 `horizontal-scrollbar-visible-p' may be used to control scrollbar
+ − 1217 visibility. Previously, the only way to remove a scrollbar was to set
+ − 1218 its size to 0. This method is still supported for backward
+ − 1219 compatibility.
+ − 1220
+ − 1221 *** The new specifiers `scrollbar-on-left-p' and `scrollbar-on-top-p'
+ − 1222 may be used to control the position of the vertical and horizontal
+ − 1223 toolbar. Previously, their position could be changed only through the
+ − 1224 use of X resources.
+ − 1225
+ − 1226 *** The new draggable vertical dividers between windows may be turned
+ − 1227 off using the `vertical-divider-always-visible-p' specifier. When
+ − 1228 this is set to nil, the vertical dividers between windows are shown
+ − 1229 only when needed, and they are not draggable.
+ − 1230
+ − 1231 Other properties of the vertical dividers may be controlled using
+ − 1232 `vertical-divider-shadow-thickness', `vertical-divider-line-width' and
+ − 1233 `vertical-divider-spacing' specifiers, which see.
+ − 1234
+ − 1235 ** Frame focus management changes.
+ − 1236
+ − 1237 *** When the variable focus-follows-mouse is non-nil, `select-frame'
+ − 1238 no longer permanently selects a different frame. The frame selection
+ − 1239 is temporary and is reverted when the current command terminates, much
+ − 1240 like the buffer selected by `set-buffer'. This is the same as in FSF
+ − 1241 Emacs.
+ − 1242
+ − 1243 *** The new function `focus-frame' sets the window system focus to
+ − 1244 FRAME (and selects it), regardless of the value of
+ − 1245 `focus-follows-mouse'. Doing this is not well behaved, so be
+ − 1246 absolutely sure that you want this.
+ − 1247
+ − 1248 The code that uses `select-frame' only to get the window manager focus
+ − 1249 should be changed to use `set-frame-focus' instead, so that they keep
+ − 1250 working when `focus-follows-mouse' is non-nil.
+ − 1251
+ − 1252 *** The special forms `save-selected-frame' and `with-selected-frame'
+ − 1253 can now be used to temporarily change selected frame.
+ − 1254
+ − 1255 *** The behavior of `other-frame' command (`C-x 5 o') is unaffected by
+ − 1256 these changes.
+ − 1257
+ − 1258 ** The function `select-window' now has an optional second argument
+ − 1259 NORECORD which if non-nil inhibits the recording of a buffer change.
+ − 1260
+ − 1261 ** The function `vertical-motion' now correctly handles the second,
+ − 1262 optional WINDOW argument. A new third argument PIXELS, if non-nil,
+ − 1263 indicates that the returned motion should be in pixels.
+ − 1264
+ − 1265 ** The new function `vertical-motion-pixels' is similar to
+ − 1266 vertical-motion but takes as input a vertical motion in pixels.
+ − 1267
+ − 1268 ** The new functions window-text-area-pixel-{width,height,edges} can
+ − 1269 be used to obtain information about the text-displaying area of a
+ − 1270 window.
+ − 1271
+ − 1272 ** The new functions `shrink-window-pixels' and `enlarge-window-pixels'
+ − 1273 can be used to adjust the size of a window by a pixel amount.
+ − 1274
+ − 1275 ** The new function `window-displayed-text-pixel-height' can be used
+ − 1276 to determine the height of the text actually displayed in a window.
+ − 1277
+ − 1278 ** The arithmetic comparison functions <, >, =, /= now accept a
+ − 1279 variable number of arguments.
+ − 1280
+ − 1281 This means that if you want to test whether A < B < C, you can write
+ − 1282 it as (< A B C) instead of (and (< A B) (< B C)). Likewise,
+ − 1283 (apply #'> LIST) now tests if LIST is monotonously increasing -- and
+ − 1284 so on.
+ − 1285
+ − 1286 ** The XEmacs hashtables now have a consistent read/print syntax.
+ − 1287 This means that a hashtable will be readably printed in a
+ − 1288 structure-like form:
+ − 1289
+ − 1290 #s(hashtable size 2 data (key1 value1 key2 value2))
+ − 1291
+ − 1292 When XEmacs reads this form, it will create a new hashtable according
+ − 1293 to description. This allows you to easily dump hashtables to files
+ − 1294 using `prin1', and read them back in using `read'.
+ − 1295
+ − 1296 If `print-readably' is non-nil, a more relaxed syntax is used; for
+ − 1297 instance:
+ − 1298
+ − 1299 #<hashtable size 2/13 data (key1 value1 key2 value2) 0x874d>
+ − 1300
+ − 1301 ** It is now possible to build XEmacs with LDAP support.
+ − 1302 You will need to install a LDAP library first. The following have
+ − 1303 been tested:
+ − 1304 - LDAP 3.3 from the University of Michigan
+ − 1305 (get it from <URL:http://www.umich.edu/~dirsvcs/ldap/>)
+ − 1306 - OpenLDAP 1.0.3 from the OpenLDAP Foundation
+ − 1307 (get it from <URL:http://www.openldap.org/>)
+ − 1308 - LDAP SDK 1.0 from Netscape Corp.
+ − 1309 (get it from <URL:http://developer.netscape.com/>)
+ − 1310
+ − 1311 ** When profiling is in effect, a call-count of all recorded functions
+ − 1312 is now calculated. This information is stored in
+ − 1313 `call-count-profile-table', and is utilized by `profile-results' as
+ − 1314 well as the new command `profile-call-count-results'.
+ − 1315
+ − 1316 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
+ − 1317 starts with a colon, if it is interned in the standard obarray.
+ − 1318
+ − 1319 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
+ − 1320 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
+ − 1321 support pre-19.12 XEmacs and pre-20 GNU Emacs by explicitly setting
+ − 1322 these variables to themselves.
+ − 1323
+ − 1324 ** The `concat' function no longer accepts integer arguments.
+ − 1325
+ − 1326 ** The new function `string' concatenates all its argument characters
+ − 1327 and returns the resulting string. This is consistent with other
+ − 1328 functions, like `list', `vector', etc.
+ − 1329
+ − 1330 ** The function `temp-directory' is now available to return the
+ − 1331 directory to store temporary files. On Unix this will be obtained
+ − 1332 from TMPDIR, defaulting to `/tmp'.
+ − 1333
+ − 1334 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
+ − 1335 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
+ − 1336 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
+ − 1337
+ − 1338 ** The `make-event' function now supports the TYPE and PLIST
+ − 1339 arguments, which can be used to create various events from Lisp. See
+ − 1340 the documentation for details.
+ − 1341
+ − 1342 ** `function-interactive' is a new function that returns the
+ − 1343 interactive specification of a funcallable object.
+ − 1344
+ − 1345 ** The new `lmessage' function allows printing of a formatted message
+ − 1346 with a particular label.
+ − 1347
+ − 1348 (lmessage 'progress "Processing... %d" counter)
+ − 1349
+ − 1350 This function is more convenient than `display-message' because it
+ − 1351 automatically applies `format' to its arguments.
+ − 1352
+ − 1353 ** The new `lwarn' function, analogous to `lmessage', allows printing
+ − 1354 a formatted warning, with a non-default CLASS or LABEL.
+ − 1355
+ − 1356 ** The new function `split-path' can now be used to explode the
+ − 1357 components of a colon-separated search path into a list.
+ − 1358
+ − 1359 (split-path "foo:bar")
+ − 1360 => ("foo" "bar")
+ − 1361
+ − 1362 ** Specifiers and symbols whose value is a specifier are now allowed
+ − 1363 as modeline specifications.
+ − 1364
+ − 1365 ** defcustom now accepts the keyword `:version'. Use this to specify
+ − 1366 in which version of Emacs a certain variable's default value changed.
+ − 1367 For example,
+ − 1368
+ − 1369 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
+ − 1370 :type 'integer
+ − 1371 :group 'foo
+ − 1372 :version "21.0")
+ − 1373
+ − 1374 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options
+ − 1375 command.
+ − 1376
+ − 1377 ** The line number tracking in modeline is now efficient, even for
+ − 1378 very large buffers. This is achieved by caching the line numbers of
+ − 1379 recent buffer positions, and reusing them. This cache is used only in
+ − 1380 the buffers where `line-number-mode' is in effect.
+ − 1381
+ − 1382 ** When the new GNU Malloc aka Doug Lea Malloc is available, it will
+ − 1383 be used. This should result in better performance on Linux systems
+ − 1384 with libc6.
+ − 1385
+ − 1386 ** The code XEmacs uses to assemble its various paths into the
+ − 1387 directory hierarchy has been rewritten to support the package system.
+ − 1388 Look under "Startup Paths" in the Info documentation for more
+ − 1389 information.
+ − 1390
+ − 1391 *** site-lisp is no longer part of the load-path by default.
+ − 1392 Its use is deprecated, but you can specify --with-site-lisp=yes at the
+ − 1393 configure command line to get it back.
+ − 1394
+ − 1395 *** `Info-default-directory-list' is now obsolete. If you want to
+ − 1396 change the path which XEmacs uses to search for info files, set
+ − 1397 `Info-directory-list' instead.
464
+ − 1398
+ − 1399
+ − 1400 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.