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1 -*- mode:outline; minor-mode:outl-mouse -*-
2
3 * Introduction
4 ==============
5
6 This file presents some general information about XEmacs. It is primarily
7 about the evolution of XEmacs and its release history.
8
9 There are five sections.
10
11 Introduction................(this section) provides an introduction
12
13 Using Outline Mode..........briefly explains how to use outline mode
14
15 The History of XEmacs.......some historical notes
16
17 What's Different?...........new or changed capabilities
18
19 XEmacs Release Notes........details of the changes between releases
20
21 New users should look at the next section on "Using Outline Mode". You will
22 be more efficient when you can navigate quickly through this file. Users
23 interested in some of the details of how XEmacs differs from FSF GNU Emacs
24 should read the section "What's Different?". Users who would to know which
25 capabilities have been introduced in each release should look at the
26 appropriate subsection of the "XEmacs Release Notes."
27
28 N.B. The term "FSF GNU Emacs" refers to any release of Emacs Version 19
29 from the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project. (We do not say just
30 "GNU Emacs" because Richard M. Stallman ["RMS"] thinks that this term
31 is too generic; although we sometimes say e.g. "GNU Emacs 19.30" to refer
32 to a specific version of FSF GNU Emacs. We do not say merely "Emacs", as
33 RMS prefers, because that is clearly an even more generic term.) The term
34 "XEmacs" refers to this program or to its predecessors "Era" and
35 "Lucid Emacs". The predecessor of all these program is called "Emacs 18".
36 When no particular version is implied, "Emacs" will be used.
37
38
39 * Using Outline Mode
40 ====================
41
42 This file is in outline mode, a major mode for viewing (or editing)
43 outlines. It allows you to make parts of the text temporarily invisible so
44 that you can see just the overall structure of the outline.
45
46 There are two ways of using outline mode: with keys or with menus. Using
47 outline mode with menus is the simplest and is just as effective as using
48 keystrokes. There are menus for outline mode on the menubar as well as in
49 popup menus activated by pressing mouse button 3.
50
51 Experiment with the menu commands. Menu items under "Headings" allow
52 you to navigate from heading to heading. Menu items under "Show" make
53 visible portions of the outline while menu items under "Hide" do the
54 opposite.
55
56 A special minor mode called "outl-mouse" has been automatically enabled. In
57 this minor mode, glyphs appear which, when clicked on, will alternately hide
58 or show sections of the outline.
59
60 You may at any time press `C-h m' to get a listing of the outline mode key
61 bindings. They are reproduced here:
62
63 Commands:
64 C-c C-n outline-next-visible-heading move by visible headings
65 C-c C-p outline-previous-visible-heading
66 C-c C-f outline-forward-same-level similar but skip subheadings
67 C-c C-b outline-backward-same-level
68 C-c C-u outline-up-heading move from subheading to heading
69
70 C-c C-t make all text invisible (not headings).
71 M-x show-all make everything in buffer visible.
72
73 The remaining commands are used when point is on a heading line.
74 They apply to some of the body or subheadings of that heading.
75 C-c C-d hide-subtree make body and subheadings invisible.
76 C-c C-s show-subtree make body and subheadings visible.
77 C-c tab show-children make direct subheadings visible.
78 No effect on body, or subheadings 2 or more levels down.
79 With arg N, affects subheadings N levels down.
80 C-c C-c make immediately following body invisible.
81 C-c C-e make it visible.
82 C-c C-l make body under heading and under its subheadings invisible.
83 The subheadings remain visible.
84 C-c C-k make all subheadings at all levels visible.x1
85
86
87 * The History of XEmacs
88 =======================
89
90 This product is an extension of GNU Emacs, previously known to some as
91 "Lucid Emacs" or "ERA". It was initially based on an early version of Emacs
92 Version 19 from the Free Software Foundation and has since been kept
93 up-to-date with recent versions of that product. It stems from a
94 collaboration of Lucid, Inc. with SunSoft DevPro (a division of Sun
95 Microsystems, Inc.; formerly called SunPro) and the University of Illinois.
96
97 NOTE: Lucid, Inc. is currently out of business but development on XEmacs
98 continues strong. Recently, Amdahl Corporation and INS Engineering have
99 both contributed significantly to the development of XEmacs.
100
101
102 ** Why Haven't XEmacs and FSF GNU Emacs Merged?
103 ===============================================
104
105 This question comes up again and again on comp.emacs.xemacs and other
106 newsgroups and mailing lists. Recently in fact there was a long, heated
107 thread about this issue.
108
109 Here is what one XEmacs developer said about this issue.
110
111 DISCLAIMER: This is provided for informational purposes only and does
112 _NOT_ necessarily represent the opinions of any of the other XEmacs
113 developers or of any of the organizations involved. Keep in mind
114 that this is a highly charged issue with differing and strongly-held
115 opinions held by the various parties involved.
116
117 Subject: Re: elisp code in GNU Emacs/XEmacs
118 From: wing@666.com (Ben Wing)
119 Message-ID: <wingDqGwLH.K6w@netcom.com>
120 Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 11:44:05 GMT
121
122 In article <9xo91fmordx.fsf@bcarsf26.nortel.ca>, Stephane Boucher
123 <sbo@bcarsf26.nortel.ca> wrote:
124
125 Well, I don't think the number of volunteers is greater by having 2
126 Emacsen. I think your affirmation holds true because of the
127 inhability of the various parties involved to work together and
128 compromise. If people could all work together, I don't think there
129 would be any benifit in having 2 Emacsen. It may seem profitable
130 right now, but in the long run, I think everyone looses. The time
131 everyone spends porting back and forth, and imitating what the other
132 has done is not spent to do new features. I've presonnally
133 experienced a project split in the past, and in the end everyone
134 lost.
135
136 I don't want to try to blame anybody for the current fiasco. But we do
137 have a fiasco. That is unfortunate. There are so many contributors
138 out there that if everyone worked together we might be looking
139 forward to having, say, threads in Emacs. But instead, as someone
140 told me not that long ago, maybe we'll soon see a new editor come out
141 based on Java. Threads will be part of it at no extra cost, and those
142 people still using Emacs will continue to curse at the fact that they
143 can't start GNUS while typing an E-mail, and the various Emacs
144 contributors will continue to argue among themselves, nitpicking
145 about how to get the perfect solution, rather than try to move
146 forward. Meanwhile, people will enjoy using a new state of the art
147 editor.
148
149 Don't think we're just being needlessly perverse by continuing to have
150 XEmacs. I'm well aware of the problems in having a project split, and
151 don't think for a minute that we haven't tried (extremely hard, in
152 fact) to come up with a merge.
153
154 Unfortunately, as I have said before, the odds of this happening are
155 quite low due to severe conflicts (both technical, procedural, and
156 philosophical) between RMS and the XEmacs developers. If we were to
157 assent to even half of what RMS wants in a merged Emacs, it would take
158 years of work to produce the merged Emacs, and the result would be
159 less powerful than the existing XEmacs.
160
161 Since so many people seem so misinformed about this problem, I'll go
162 ahead and state the fundamental dividing issues:
163
164 1. RMS does not believe in data abstraction, and cannot be convinced
165 of the folly of this. This by itself is such a huge division that
166 it makes a merge basically unthinkable. Because of this, FSF Emacs
167 is basically unmaintainable by anyone other than RMS. RMS has
168 consented to all the data abstraction I want provided that I take
169 sole responsibility for writing this code (which basically means
170 I'd have to write almost all of the code or rewrite most of his
171 code), and provided that he can use this issue as a bargaining
172 chip to get concessions of his own.
173 2. RMS sees the merge process as a series of mutual concessions
174 traded back and forth. IMHO this is reasonable for a peace treaty
175 but absurd for a piece of software -- we have to have technical
176 agreement on the major issues involved, and the chance of that
177 happening is basically nil.
178 3. RMS has insisted in full backwards compatibility with all aspects
179 of FSF Emacs, no matter how ugly; and furthermore, this backwards
180 compatibility must work fast enough to make existing code run
181 without problem. This basically means that there would have to be
182 parallel C implementations of events, keymaps, and many other data
183 structures. This not only will take months or years of extra work
184 to implement, but poses some fundamental technical problems due to
185 the non-abstractedness of FSF Emacs (e.g. in FSF Emacs keymaps are
186 conses or vectors and a lot of code depends on this, and
187 reconciling this with XEmacs's primitive keymap type is difficult
188 to impossible).
189 4. RMS will not even consent to neutral names for the two editors. He
190 objects to call his editor FSF Emacs because for some unfathomable
191 reason he finds it insulting. He suggests just Emacs, which I find
192 not only insulting (XEmacs is just as much Emacs as is FSF Emacs)
193 but also quite confusing. He will not even consent to calling his
194 editor GNU Emacs without also referring to XEmacs as GNU XEmacs --
195 basically a Borg-like assimilation attempt at making XEmacs a GNU
196 product, which it is not. (None of the developers of Lucid Emacs
197 and XEmacs were or are sanctioned by GNU, and none of us got the
198 least bit of assistance or cooperation in doing our work. In fact,
199 RMS actively made it harder by choosing to ignore all work
200 previously done in XEmacs and adding his own incompatible
201 interfaces for functionality already in XEmacs. This makes it
202 quite difficult to track FSF Emacs and keep a sane API.) He has
203 stated many times, and continues to assert, that most or all of
204 the work done on Lucid Emacs and XEmacs was done primarily as a
205 testing ground for potential features to be added to FSF Emacs.
206 All of the developers of Lucid Emacs and XEmacs assert that this
207 is patently false -- so why does RMS continue to insist that this
208 is the case?
209
210 ben
211 --
212 "... then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was
213 more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin
214
215
216 ** Why Another Version of Emacs? (The Lucid, Inc. Point of View)
217 =================================================================
218
219 Lucid's latest product, Energize, is a C/C++ development environment.
220 Rather than invent (and force our users to learn) a new user-interface, we
221 chose to build part of our environment on top of the world's best editor,
222 GNU Emacs. (Though our product is commercial, the work we did on is
223 free software, and is useful without having to purchase our product.)
224
225 We needed a version of Emacs with mouse-sensitive regions, multiple fonts,
226 the ability to mark sections of a buffer as read-only, the ability to detect
227 which parts of a buffer has been modified, and many other features.
228
229 *** Why Not Epoch or GNU Emacs?
230 -------------------------------
231
232 For our purposes, the existing version of Epoch was not sufficient; it did
233 not allow us to put arbitrary pixmaps/icons in buffers, `undo' did not
234 restore changes to regions, regions did not overlap and merge their
235 attributes in the way we needed, and several other things.
236
237 We could have devoted our time to making Epoch do what we needed (and, in
238 fact, we spent some time doing that in 1990) but, since the Free Software
239 Foundation planned to include Epoch-like features in their Version 19, we
240 decided that our efforts would be better spent improving GNU Emacs
241 instead of Epoch.
242
243 Our original hope was that our changes to GNU Emacs would be
244 incorporated into the "official" v19. However, scheduling conflicts arose,
245 and we found that, given the amount of work still remaining to be done, we
246 didn't have the time or manpower to do the level of coordination that would
247 be necessary to get our changes accepted by the Free Software Foundation.
248 Consequently, we released our work as a forked branch of Emacs, instead of
249 delaying any longer.
250
251 Roughly a year after Lucid Emacs 19.0 was released, a beta version of the
252 Free Software Foundation branch of Emacs 19 was released. This version
253 was better in some areas, and worse in others, as reflects the differing
254 focus of our development efforts.
255
256 We planned to continue developing and supporting Lucid Emacs, and merging in
257 bug fixes and new features from the Free Software Foundation branch as
258 appropriate; we did not plan to discard any of the functionality that we
259 implemented which Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation has
260 chosen not to include in his version.
261
262 However, events have overtaken us, and Lucid, Inc. has effectively ceased
263 doing business and is (September 1994) in the process of being sold. Our
264 efforts on Lucid Emacs have also ceased and we've turned over the continued
265 enhancement of Lucid Emacs to the University of Illinois under Chuck
266 Thompson, a member of the Lucid Emacs team and a maintainer of Epoch.
267 At the same time, Lucid Emacs has been renamed XEmacs to reflect the
268 substantial contribution of the University of Illinois with the support of
269 Sun Microsystems.
270
271 Certain elements of Lucid Emacs, or derivatives of them, have been ported to
272 the FSF GNU Emacs. We have not been doing work in this direction, because
273 we feel that Lucid Emacs has a cleaner and more extensible substrate, and
274 that any kind of merger between the two branches would be far easier by
275 merging the Free Software Foundation changes into our version than the other
276 way around.
277
278 We were working closely with the Epoch developers to merge in the
279 remaining Epoch functionality which Lucid Emacs does not yet have. Epoch
280 and Lucid Emacs will soon be one and the same thing. Work is being done on
281 a compatibility package which will allow Epoch 4 code to run in XEmacs with
282 little or no change. (As of 19.8, Lucid Emacs is running a descendant of
283 the Epoch redisplay engine.)
284
285 ** Why Another Version of Emacs? (The SunPro Point of View)
286 ============================================================
287
288 Emacs 18 has been around for a long, long time. Version 19 was supposed to
289 be the successor to Emacs 18 with X support. It was going to be available
290 "real soon" for a long time (some people remember hearing about v19 as early
291 as 1984!), but it never came out. v19 development was going very, very
292 slowly, and from the outside it seemed that it was not moving at all. In
293 the meantime other people gave up waiting for v19 and decided to build their
294 own X-aware Emacsen. The most important of these was probably Epoch, which
295 came from the University of Illinois and was based on v18.
296
297 Around three years ago we decided that we wanted an integrated editor. We
298 contracted with the University of Illinois to provide a number of basic
299 enhancements to the functionality in Epoch. The University of Illinois
300 initially was planning to deliver this on top of Epoch code.
301
302 In the meantime (actually some time before we talked with the University of
303 Illinois) Lucid had decided that it also wanted to provide an integrated
304 environment with an integrated editor. Lucid decided that the Version 19
305 basis was a better one than Version 18 and thus decided not to use Epoch but
306 instead work with Richard Stallman, the head of the Free Software Foundation
307 and principle author of Emacs, on getting Version 19 out. At some point
308 Stallman and Lucid parted ways. Lucid kept working and got a Version 19 out
309 that they called Lucid Emacs 19.
310
311 After Lucid's v19 came out it became clear to us (the University of Illinois
312 and SunPro) that the right thing to do was to push for an integration of
313 both Lucid Emacs and Epoch, and to get the deliverables that we were asking
314 from the University of Illinois on top of this integrated platform. Through
315 the last two years, SunPro has been actively supporting this product and has
316 been investing a comparable amount of effort into it as Lucid has.
317 Substantial portions of the current code have originated under the support
318 of SunPro, either directly in SunPro, or in the University of Illinois but
319 paid for by us. This code was kept away from Lucid for a while, but later
320 was made available to them. Initially Lucid didn't know that we were
321 supporting UofI, but later we were open about it.
322
323 Eventually, all development source trees were synched up. Currently, there
324 is basically no difference in the source trees between what is at the
325 University of Illinois and SunPro.
326
327 SunPro originally called the integrated product ERA, for "Emacs Rewritten
328 Again". At some point, SunPro and Lucid came to an agreement to find a name
329 for the product that was not specific to either company. An additional
330 constraint that Lucid placed on the name was that it must contain the word
331 "Emacs" in it -- thus "ERA" was not acceptable. The agreed-upon name was
332 "XEmacs", and this is what the product has been called starting with the
333 19.11 release.
334
335
336 * What's Different?
337 ===================
338
339
340 ** Differences between XEmacs and FSF GNU Emacs 19
341 ==================================================
342
343 In XEmacs, events are first-class objects. FSF 19 represents them as
344 integers, which obscures the differences between a key gesture and the
345 ancient ASCII code used to represent a particular overlapping subset of them.
346
347 In XEmacs, keymaps are first-class opaque objects. FSF 19 represents them as
348 complicated combinations of association lists and vectors. If you use the
349 advertised functional interface to manipulation of keymaps, the same code
350 will work in XEmacs, Emacs 18, and and FSF GNU Emacs 19; if your code depends
351 on the underlying implementation of keymaps, it will not.
352
353 XEmacs uses "extents" to represent all non-textual aspects of buffers;
354 FSF 19 uses two distinct objects, "text properties" and "overlays",
355 which divide up the functionality between them. Extents are a
356 superset of the functionality of the two FSF data types. The full FSF
357 19 interface to text properties is supported in XEmacs (with extents
358 being the underlying representation).
359
360 Extents can be made to be copied into strings, and thus restored by kill
361 and yank. Thus, one can specify this behavior on either "extents" or
362 "text properties", whereas in FSF 19 text properties always have this
363 behavior and overlays never do.
364
365 Many more packages are provided standard with XEmacs than with FSF 19.
366
367 Pixmaps of arbitrary size can be embedded in a buffer.
368
369 Variable width fonts work.
370
371 The height of a line is the height of the tallest font on that line, instead
372 of all lines having the same height.
373
374 XEmacs uses the MIT "Xt" toolkit instead of raw Xlib calls, which
375 makes it be a more well-behaved X citizen (and also improves
376 portability). A result of this is that it is possible to include
377 other Xt "Widgets" in the XEmacs window. Also, XEmacs understands the
378 standard Xt command-line arguments.
379
380 XEmacs provides support for ToolTalk on systems that have it.
381
382 XEmacs can ask questions using popup dialog boxes. Any command executed from
383 a menu will ask yes/no questions with dialog boxes, while commands executed
384 via the keyboard will use the minibuffer.
385
386 XEmacs has a built-in toolbar. Four toolbars can actually be configured:
387 top, bottom, left, and right toolbars.
388
389 XEmacs has vertical and horizontal scrollbars. Unlike in FSF 19 (which
390 provides a primitive form of vertical scrollbar), these are true toolkit
391 scrollbars. A look-alike Motif scrollbar is provided for those who
392 don't have Motif. (Even for those who do, the look-alike may be preferable
393 as it is faster.)
394
395 If you're running on a machine with audio hardware, you can specify sound
396 files for XEmacs to play instead of the default X beep. See the documentation
397 of the function load-sound-file and the variable sound-alist.
398
399 An XEmacs frame can be placed within an "external client widget" managed by
400 another application. This allows an application to use an XEmacs frame as its
401 text pane rather than the standard Text widget that is provided with Motif or
402 Athena. XEmacs supports Motif applications, generic Xt (e.g. Athena)
403 applications, and raw Xlib applications.
404
405 Here are some more specifics about the XEmacs implementation:
406
407 *** The Input Model
408 -------------------
409
410 The fundamental unit of input is an "event" instead of a character. An
411 event is a new data type that contains several pieces of information.
412 There are several kinds of event, and corresponding accessor and utility
413 functions. We tried to abstract them so that they would apply equally
414 well to a number of window systems.
415
416 NOTE: All timestamps are measured as milliseconds since Emacs started.
417
418 key_press_event
419 event_channel A token representing which keyboard generated it.
420 For this kind of event, this is a frame object.
421 (This is for eventual support of multiple displays.)
422 timestamp When it happened
423 key What keysym this is; an integer or a symbol.
424 If this is an integer, it will be in the printing
425 ASCII range: >32 and <127.
426 modifiers Bucky-bits on that key: control, meta, etc.
427 For most keys, Shift is not a bit; that is implicit
428 in the keyboard layout.
429
430 button_press_event
431 button_release_event
432 event_channel A token representing which mouse generated it.
433 For this kind of event, this is a frame object.
434 timestamp When it happened
435 button What button went down or up.
436 modifiers Bucky-bits on that button: shift, control, meta, etc.
437 x, y Where it was at the button-state-change (in pixels).
438
439 pointer_motion_event
440 event_channel A token representing which mouse generated it.
441 For this kind of event, this is a frame object.
442 timestamp When it happened
443 x, y Where it was after it moved (in pixels).
444 modifiers Bucky-bits down when the motion was detected.
445 (Possibly not all window systems will provide this?)
446
447 process_event
448 timestamp When it happened
449 process the emacs "process" object in question
450
451 timeout_event
452 timestamp Now (really, when the timeout was signaled)
453 interval_id The ID returned when the associated call to
454 add_timeout_cb() was made
455 ------ the rest of the fields are filled in by Emacs -----
456 id_number The Emacs timeout ID for this timeout (more
457 than one timeout event can have the same value
458 here, since Emacs timeouts, as opposed to
459 add_timeout_cb() timeouts, can resignal
460 themselves)
461 function An elisp function to call when this timeout is
462 processed.
463 object The object passed to that function.
464
465 eval_event
466 timestamp When it happened
467 function An elisp function to call with this event object.
468 object Anything.
469 This kind of event is used internally; sometimes the
470 window system interface would like to inform emacs of
471 some user action (such as focusing on another frame)
472 but needs that to happen synchronously with the other
473 user input, like keypresses. This is useful when
474 events are reported through callbacks rather
475 than in the standard event stream.
476
477 misc_user_event
478 timestamp When it happened
479 function An elisp function to call with this event object.
480 object Anything.
481 This is similar to an eval_event, except that it is
482 generated by user actions: selections in the
483 menubar or scrollbar actions. It is a "command"
484 event, like key and mouse presses (and unlike mouse
485 motion, process output, and enter and leave window
486 hooks). In many ways, eval_events are not the same
487 as keypresses or misc_user_events.
488
489 magic_event
490 No user-serviceable parts within. This is for things
491 like KeymapNotify and ExposeRegion events and so on
492 that emacs itself doesn't care about, but which it
493 must do something with for proper interaction with
494 the window system.
495
496 Magic_events are handled somewhat asynchronously, just
497 like subprocess filters. However, occasionally a
498 magic_event needs to be handled synchronously; in that
499 case, the asynchronous handling of the magic_event will
500 push an eval_event back onto the queue, which will be
501 handled synchronously later. This is one of the
502 reasons why eval_events exist; I'm not entirely happy
503 with this aspect of this event model.
504
505
506 The function `next-event' blocks and returns one of the above-described
507 event objects. The function `dispatch-event' takes an event and processes
508 it in the appropriate way.
509
510 For a process-event, dispatch-event calls the process's handler; for a
511 mouse-motion event, the mouse-motion-handler hook is called, and so on.
512 For magic-events, dispatch-event does window-system-dependent things,
513 including calling some non-window-system-dependent hooks: map-frame-hook,
514 unmap-frame-hook, mouse-enter-frame-hook, and mouse-leave-frame-hook.
515
516 The function `next-command-event' calls `next-event' until it gets a key or
517 button from the user (that is, not a process, motion, timeout, or magic
518 event). If it gets an event that is not a key or button, it calls
519 `dispatch-event' on it immediately and reads another one. The
520 next-command-event function could be implemented in Emacs Lisp, though it
521 isn't. Generally one should call `next-command-event' instead of
522 `next-event'.
523
524 read-char calls next-command-event; if it doesn't get an event that can be
525 converted to an ASCII character, it signals an error. Otherwise it returns
526 an integer.
527
528 The variable `last-command-char' always contains an integer, or nil (if the
529 last read event has no ASCII equivalent, as when it is a mouse-click or a
530 non-ASCII character chord.)
531
532 The new variable `last-command-event' holds an event object, that could be
533 a non-ASCII character, a button click, a menu selection, etc.
534
535 The variable `unread-command-char' no longer exists, and has been replaced
536 by `unread-command-events'. With the new event model, it is incorrect for
537 code to do (setq unread-command-char (read-char)), because all user-input
538 can't be represented as ASCII characters. *** This is an incompatible
539 change. Code which sets `unread-command-char' must be updated to use the
540 combination of `next-command-event' and `unread-command-events' instead.
541
542 The functions `this-command-keys' and `recent-keys' return a vector of
543 event objects, instead of a string of ASCII characters. *** This also
544 is an incompatible change.
545
546 Almost nothing happens at interrupt level; the SIGIO handler simply sets a
547 flag, and later, the X event queue is scanned for KeyPress events which map
548 to ^G. All redisplay happens in the main thread of the process.
549
550
551 *** Keymaps
552 -----------
553
554 Instead of keymaps being alists or obarrays, they are a new primary data
555 type. The only user access to the contents of a keymap is through the
556 existing keymap-manipulation functions, and a new function, map-keymap.
557 This means that existing code that manipulates keymaps may need to
558 be changed.
559
560 One of our goals with the new input and keymap code was to make more
561 character combinations available for binding, besides just ASCII and
562 function keys. We want to be able bind different commands to Control-a
563 and Control-Shift-a; we also want it to be possible for the keys Control-h
564 and Backspace (and Control-M and Return, and Control-I and Tab, etc) to
565 be distinct.
566
567 One of the most common complaints that new Emacs users have is that backspace
568 is help. The answer is to play around with the keyboard-translate-table, or
569 be lucky enough to have a system administrator who has done this for you
570 already; but if it were possible to bind backspace and C-h to different
571 things, then (under a window manager at least) both backspace and delete
572 would delete a character, and ^H would be help. There's no need to deal
573 with xmodmap, kbd-translate-table, etc.
574
575 Here are some more examples: suppose you want to bind one function to Tab,
576 and another to Control-Tab. This can't be done if Tab and Control-I are the
577 same thing. What about control keys that have no ASCII equivalent, like
578 Control-< ? One might want that to be bound to set-mark-at-point-min. We
579 want M-C-Backspace to be kill-backward-sexp. But we want M-Backspace to be
580 kill-backward-word. Again, this can't be done if Backspace and C-h are
581 indistinguishable.
582
583 The user represents keys as a string of ASCII characters (when possible and
584 convenient), or as a vector of event objects, or as a vector of "key
585 description lists", that looks like (control a), or (control meta delete)
586 or (shift f1). The order of the modifier-names is not significant, so
587 (meta control x) and (control meta x) are the same.
588
589 `define-key' knows how to take any of the above representations and store them
590 into a keymap. When Emacs wants to return a key sequence (this-command-keys,
591 recent-keys, keyboard-macros, and read-key-sequence, for example) it returns
592 a vector of event objects. Keyboard macros can also be represented as ASCII
593 strings or as vectors of key description lists.
594
595 This is an incompatible change: code which calls `this-command-keys',
596 `recent-keys', `read-key-sequence', or manipulates keyboard-macros probably
597 needs to be changed so that it no longer assumes that the returned value is a
598 string.
599
600 Control-Shift-a is specified as (control A), not (control shift a), since A
601 is a two-case character. But for keys that don't have an upper case
602 version, like F1, Backspace, and Escape, you use the (shift backspace) syntax.
603
604 See the doc string for our version of define-key, reproduced below in the
605 `Changed Functions' section. Note that when the KEYS argument is a string,
606 it has the same semantics as the v18 define-key.
607
608
609 *** Xt Integration
610 ------------------
611
612 The heart of the event loop is implemented in terms of the Xt event functions
613 (specifically XtAppProcessEvent), and uses Xt's concept of timeouts and
614 file-descriptor callbacks, eliminating a large amount of system-dependent code
615 (Xt does it for you.)
616
617 If Emacs is compiled with support for X, it uses the Xt event loop even when
618 Emacs is not running on an X display (the Xt event loop supports this). This
619 makes it possible to run Emacs on a dumb TTY, and later connect it to one or
620 more X servers. It should also be possible to later connect an existing Emacs
621 process to additional TTY's, although this code is still experimental. (Our
622 intent at this point is not to have an Emacs that is being used by multiple
623 people at the same time: it is to make it possible for someone to go home, log
624 in on a dialup line, and connect to the same Emacs process that is running
625 under X in their office without having to recreate their buffer state and so
626 on.)
627
628 If Emacs is not compiled with support for X, then it instead uses more general
629 code, something like what v18 does; but this way of doing things is a lot more
630 modular.
631
632 (Linking Emacs with Xt seems to only add about 300k to the executable size,
633 compared with an Emacs linked with Xlib only.)
634
635
636 *** Region Highlighting
637 -----------------------
638
639 If the variable `zmacs-regions' is true, then the region between point and
640 mark will be highlighted when "active". Those commands which push a mark
641 (such as C-SPC, and C-x C-x) make the region become "active" and thus
642 highlighted. Most commands (all non-motion commands, basically) cause it to
643 become non-highlighted (non-"active"). Commands that operate on the region
644 (such as C-w, C-x C-l, etc.) only work if the region is in the highlighted
645 state.
646
647 zmacs-activate-region-hook and zmacs-deactivate-region-hook are run at the
648 appropriate times; under X, zmacs-activate-region-hook makes the X selection
649 be the region between point and mark, thus doing two things at once: making
650 the region and the X selection be the same; and making the region highlight
651 in the same way as the X selection.
652
653 If `zmacs-regions' is true, then the `mark-marker' command returns nil unless
654 the region is currently in the active (highlighted) state. With an argument
655 of t, this returns the mark (if there is one) regardless of the active-region
656 state. You should *generally* not use the mark unless the region is active,
657 if the user has expressed a preference for the active-region model. Watch
658 out! Moving this marker changes the mark position. If you set the marker not
659 to point anywhere, the buffer will have no mark.
660
661 In this way, the primary selection is a fairly transitory entity; but
662 when something is copied to the kill ring, it is made the Clipboard
663 selection. It is also stored into CUT_BUFFER0, for compatibility with
664 X applications that don't understand selections (like Emacs18).
665
666 Compatibility note: if you have code which uses (mark) or (mark-marker),
667 then you need to either: change those calls to (mark t) or (mark-marker t);
668 or simply bind `zmacs-regions' to nil around the call to mark or mark-marker.
669 This is probably the best solution, since it will work in Emacs 18 as well.
670
671
672 *** Menubars and Dialog Boxes
673 -----------------------------
674
675 Here is an example of a menubar definition:
676
677 (defvar default-menubar
678 '(("File" ["Open File..." find-file t]
679 ["Save Buffer" save-buffer t]
680 ["Save Buffer As..." write-file t]
681 ["Revert Buffer" revert-buffer t]
682 "-----"
683 ["Print Buffer" lpr-buffer t]
684 "-----"
685 ["Delete Frame" delete-frame t]
686 ["Kill Buffer..." kill-buffer t]
687 ["Exit Emacs" save-buffers-kill-emacs t]
688 )
689 ("Edit" ["Undo" advertised-undo t]
690 ["Cut" kill-primary-selection t]
691 ["Copy" copy-primary-selection t]
692 ["Paste" yank-clipboard-selection t]
693 ["Clear" delete-primary-selection t]
694 )
695 ...))
696
697 The first element of each menu item is the string to print on the menu.
698
699 The second element is the callback function; if it is a symbol, it is
700 invoked with `call-interactively.' If it is a list, it is invoked with
701 `eval'.
702
703 If the second element is a symbol, then the menu also displays the key that
704 is bound to that command (if any).
705
706 The third element of the menu items determines whether the item is selectable.
707 It may be t, nil, or a form to evaluate. Also, a hook is run just before a
708 menu is exposed, which can be used to change the value of these slots.
709 For example, there is a hook that makes the "undo" menu item be selectable
710 only in the cases when `advertised-undo' would not signal an error.
711
712 Menus may have other menus nested within them; they will cascade.
713
714 There are utility functions for adding items to menus, deleting items,
715 disabling them, etc.
716
717 The function `popup-menu' takes a menu description and pops it up.
718
719 The function `popup-dialog-box' takes a dialog-box description and pops
720 it up. Dialog box descriptions look a lot like menu descriptions.
721
722 The menubar, menu, and dialog-box code is implemented as a library,
723 with an interface which hides the toolkit that implements it.
724
725
726 *** Isearch Changes
727 -------------------
728
729 Isearch has been reimplemented in a different way, adding some new features,
730 and causing a few incompatible changes.
731
732 - the old isearch-*-char variables are no longer supported. In the old
733 system, one could make ^A mean "repeat the search" by doing something
734 like (setq search-repeat-char ?C-a). In the new system, this is
735 accomplished with
736
737 (define-key isearch-mode-map "\C-a" 'isearch-repeat-forward)
738
739 - The advantage of using the normal keymap mechanism for this is that you
740 can bind more than one key to an isearch command: for example, both C-a
741 and C-s could do the same thing inside isearch mode. You can also bind
742 multi-key sequences inside of isearch mode, and bind non-ASCII keys.
743 For example, to use the F1 key to terminate a search:
744
745 (define-key isearch-mode-map 'f1 'isearch-exit)
746
747 or to make ``C-c C-c'' terminate a search:
748
749 (define-key isearch-mode-map "\C-c\C-c" 'isearch-exit)
750
751 - If isearch is behaving case-insensitively (the default) and you type an
752 upper case character, then the search will become case-sensitive. This
753 can be disabled by setting `search-caps-disable-folding' to nil.
754
755 - There is a history ring of the strings previously searched for; typing
756 M-p or M-n while searching will cycle through this ring. Typing M-TAB
757 will do completion across the set of items in the history ring.
758
759 - The ESC key is no longer used to terminate an incremental search. The
760 RET key should be used instead. This change is necessary for it to be
761 possible to bind "meta" characters to isearch commands.
762
763
764 *** Startup Code Changes
765 ------------------------
766
767 The initial X frame is mapped before the user's .emacs file is executed.
768 Without this, there is no way for the user to see any error messages
769 generated by their .emacs file, any windows created by the .emacs file
770 don't show up, and the copyleft notice isn't shown.
771
772 The default values for load-path, exec-path, lock-directory, and
773 Info-directory-list are not (necessarily) built into Emacs, but are
774 computed at startup time.
775
776 First, Emacs looks at the directory in which its executable file resides:
777
778 o If that directory contains subdirectories named "lisp" and "lib-src",
779 then those directories are used as the lisp library and exec directory.
780
781 o If the parent of the directory in which the emacs executable is located
782 contains "lisp" and "lib-src" subdirectories, then those are used.
783
784 o If ../lib/xemacs-<version> (starting from the directory in which the
785 emacs executable is located) contains a "lisp" subdirectory and either
786 a "lib-src" subdirectory or a <configuration-name> subdirectory, then
787 those are used.
788
789 o If the emacs executable that was run is a symbolic link, then the link
790 is chased, and the resultant directory is checked as above.
791
792 (Actually, it doesn't just look for "lisp/", it looks for "lisp/prim/",
793 which reduces the chances of a false positive.)
794
795 If the lisp directory contains subdirectories, they are added to the default
796 load-path as well. If the site-lisp directory exists and contains
797 subdirectories, they are then added. Subdirectories whose names begin with
798 a dot or a hyphen are not added to the load-path.
799
800 These heuristics fail if the Emacs binary was copied from the main Emacs
801 tree to some other directory, and links for the lisp directory were not put
802 in. This isn't much of a restriction: either make there be subdirectories
803 (or symbolic links) of the directory of the emacs executable, or make the
804 "installed" emacs executable be a symbolic link to an executable in a more
805 appropriate directory structure. For example, this setup works:
806
807 /usr/local/xemacs/xemacs* ; The executable.
808 /usr/local/xemacs/lisp/ ; The associated directories.
809 /usr/local/xemacs/etc/ ; Any of the files in this list
810 /usr/local/xemacs/lock/ ; could be symbolic links as well.
811 /usr/local/xemacs/info/
812
813 As does this:
814
815 /usr/local/bin/xemacs -> ../xemacs/src/xemacs-19.14 ; A link...
816 /usr/local/xemacs/src/xemacs-19.14* ; The executable,
817 /usr/local/xemacs/lisp/ ; and the rest of
818 /usr/local/xemacs/etc/ ; the the source
819 /usr/local/xemacs/lock/ ; tree.
820 /usr/local/xemacs/info/
821
822 This configuration might be used for a multi-architecture installation; assume
823 that $LOCAL refers to a directory which contains only files specific to a
824 particular architecture (i.e., executables) and $SHARED refers to those files
825 which are not machine specific (i.e., lisp code and documentation.)
826
827 $LOCAL/bin/xemacs@ -> $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/xemacs*
828 $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/lisp@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/lisp/
829 $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/etc@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/etc/
830 $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/info@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/info/
831
832 The following would also work, but the above is probably more attractive:
833
834 $LOCAL/bin/xemacs*
835 $LOCAL/bin/lisp@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/lisp/
836 $LOCAL/bin/etc@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/etc/
837 $LOCAL/bin/info@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/info/
838
839 If Emacs can't find the requisite directories, it writes a message like this
840 (or some appropriate subset of it) to stderr:
841
842 WARNING:
843 couldn't find an obvious default for load-path, exec-directory, and
844 lock-directory, and there were no defaults specified in paths.h when
845 Emacs was built. Perhaps some directories don't exist, or the Emacs
846 executable, /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/xemacs is in a strange place?
847
848 Without both exec-directory and load-path, Emacs will be very broken.
849 Consider making a symbolic link from /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/etc
850 to wherever the appropriate Emacs etc/ directory is, and from
851 /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/lisp/ to wherever the appropriate Emacs
852 lisp library is.
853
854 Without lock-directory set, file locking won't work. Consider
855 creating /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/lock as a directory or symbolic
856 link for use as the lock directory.
857
858 The default installation tree is the following:
859
860 /usr/local/bin/b2m ;
861 ctags ; executables that
862 emacsclient ; should be in
863 etags ; user's path
864 xemacs -> xemacs-<version> ;
865 xemacs ;
866 /usr/local/lib/xemacs/site-lisp
867 /usr/local/lib/xemacs/lock
868 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/etc ; architecture ind. files
869 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/info
870 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/lisp
871 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/<configuration> ; binaries emacs may run
872
873
874 *** X Resources
875 ---------------
876
877 (Note: This section is copied verbatim from the XEmacs Reference Manual.)
878
879 The Emacs resources are generally set per-frame. Each Emacs frame
880 can have its own name or the same name as another, depending on the
881 name passed to the `make-frame' function.
882
883 You can specify resources for all frames with the syntax:
884
885 Emacs*parameter: value
886
887 or
888
889 Emacs*EmacsFrame.parameter:value
890
891 You can specify resources for a particular frame with the syntax:
892
893 Emacs*FRAME-NAME.parameter: value
894
895
896 **** Geometry Resources
897 -----------------------
898
899 To make the default size of all Emacs frames be 80 columns by 55
900 lines, do this:
901
902 Emacs*EmacsFrame.geometry: 80x55
903
904 To set the geometry of a particular frame named `fred', do this:
905
906 Emacs*fred.geometry: 80x55
907
908 Important! Do not use the following syntax:
909
910 Emacs*geometry: 80x55
911
912 You should never use `*geometry' with any X application. It does not
913 say "make the geometry of Emacs be 80 columns by 55 lines." It really
914 says, "make Emacs and all subwindows thereof be 80x55 in whatever units
915 they care to measure in." In particular, that is both telling the
916 Emacs text pane to be 80x55 in characters, and telling the menubar pane
917 to be 80x55 pixels, which is surely not what you want.
918
919 As a special case, this geometry specification also works (and sets
920 the default size of all Emacs frames to 80 columns by 55 lines):
921
922 Emacs.geometry: 80x55
923
924 since that is the syntax used with most other applications (since most
925 other applications have only one top-level window, unlike Emacs). In
926 general, however, the top-level shell (the unmapped ApplicationShell
927 widget named `Emacs' that is the parent of the shell widgets that
928 actually manage the individual frames) does not have any interesting
929 resources on it, and you should set the resources on the frames instead.
930
931 The `-geometry' command-line argument sets only the geometry of the
932 initial frame created by Emacs.
933
934 A more complete explanation of geometry-handling is
935
936 * The `-geometry' command-line option sets the `Emacs.geometry'
937 resource, that is, the geometry of the ApplicationShell.
938
939 * For the first frame created, the size of the frame is taken from
940 the ApplicationShell if it is specified, otherwise from the
941 geometry of the frame.
942
943 * For subsequent frames, the order is reversed: First the frame, and
944 then the ApplicationShell.
945
946 * For the first frame created, the position of the frame is taken
947 from the ApplicationShell (`Emacs.geometry') if it is specified,
948 otherwise from the geometry of the frame.
949
950 * For subsequent frames, the position is taken only from the frame,
951 and never from the ApplicationShell.
952
953 This is rather complicated, but it does seem to provide the most
954 intuitive behavior with respect to the default sizes and positions of
955 frames created in various ways.
956
957
958 **** Iconic Resources
959 ---------------------
960
961 Analogous to `-geometry', the `-iconic' command-line option sets the
962 iconic flag of the ApplicationShell (`Emacs.iconic') and always applies
963 to the first frame created regardless of its name. However, it is
964 possible to set the iconic flag on particular frames (by name) by using
965 the `Emacs*FRAME-NAME.iconic' resource.
966
967
968 **** Resource List
969 ------------------
970
971 Emacs frames accept the following resources:
972
973 `geometry' (class `Geometry'): string
974 Initial geometry for the frame. *Note Geometry Resources:: for a
975 complete discussion of how this works.
976
977 `iconic' (class `Iconic'): boolean
978 Whether this frame should appear in the iconified state.
979
980 `internalBorderWidth' (class `InternalBorderWidth'): int
981 How many blank pixels to leave between the text and the edge of the
982 window.
983
984 `interline' (class `Interline'): int
985 How many pixels to leave between each line (may not be
986 implemented).
987
988 `menubar' (class `Menubar'): boolean
989 Whether newly-created frames should initially have a menubar. Set
990 to true by default.
991
992 `initiallyUnmapped' (class `InitiallyUnmapped'): boolean
993 Whether XEmacs should leave the initial frame unmapped when it
994 starts up. This is useful if you are starting XEmacs as a server
995 (e.g. in conjunction with gnuserv or the external client widget).
996 You can also control this with the `-unmapped' command-line option.
997
998 `barCursor' (class `BarColor'): boolean
999 Whether the cursor should be displayed as a bar, or the
1000 traditional box.
1001
1002 `textPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
1003 The cursor to use when the mouse is over text. This resource is
1004 used to initialize the variable `x-pointer-shape'.
1005
1006 `selectionPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
1007 The cursor to use when the mouse is over a selectable text region
1008 (an extent with the `highlight' property; for example, an Info
1009 cross-reference). This resource is used to initialize the variable
1010 `x-selection-pointer-shape'.
1011
1012 `spacePointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
1013 The cursor to use when the mouse is over a blank space in a buffer
1014 (that is, after the end of a line or after the end-of-file). This
1015 resource is used to initialize the variable
1016 `x-nontext-pointer-shape'.
1017
1018 `modeLinePointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
1019 The cursor to use when the mouse is over a mode line. This
1020 resource is used to initialize the variable `x-mode-pointer-shape'.
1021
1022 `gcPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
1023 The cursor to display when a garbage-collection is in progress.
1024 This resource is used to initialize the variable
1025 `x-gc-pointer-shape'.
1026
1027 `scrollbarPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
1028 The cursor to use when the mouse is over the scrollbar. This
1029 resource is used to initialize the variable
1030 `x-scrollbar-pointer-shape'.
1031
1032 `pointerColor' (class `Foreground'): color-name
1033 `pointerBackground' (class `Background'): color-name
1034 The foreground and background colors of the mouse cursor. These
1035 resources are used to initialize the variables
1036 `x-pointer-foreground-color' and `x-pointer-background-color'.
1037
1038 `scrollBarWidth' (class `ScrollBarWidth'): integer
1039 How wide the vertical scrollbars should be, in pixels; 0 means no
1040 vertical scrollbars. You can also use a resource specification of
1041 the form `*scrollbar.width', or the usual toolkit scrollbar
1042 resources: `*XmScrollBar.width' (Motif), `*XlwScrollBar.width'
1043 (Lucid), or `*Scrollbar.thickness' (Athena). We don't recommend
1044 that you use the toolkit resources, though, because they're
1045 dependent on how exactly your particular build of XEmacs was
1046 configured.
1047
1048 `scrollBarHeight' (class `ScrollBarHeight'): integer
1049 How high the horizontal scrollbars should be, in pixels; 0 means no
1050 horizontal scrollbars. You can also use a resource specification
1051 of the form `*scrollbar.height', or the usual toolkit scrollbar
1052 resources: `*XmScrollBar.height' (Motif), `*XlwScrollBar.height'
1053 (Lucid), or `*Scrollbar.thickness' (Athena). We don't recommend
1054 that you use the toolkit resources, though, because they're
1055 dependent on how exactly your particular build of XEmacs was
1056 configured.
1057
1058 `scrollBarPlacement' (class `ScrollBarPlacement'): string
1059 Where the horizontal and vertical scrollbars should be positioned.
1060 This should be one of the four strings `bottom-left',
1061 `bottom-right', `top-left', and `top-right'. Default is
1062 `bottom-right' for the Motif and Lucid scrollbars and
1063 `bottom-left' for the Athena scrollbars.
1064
1065 `topToolBarHeight' (class `TopToolBarHeight'): integer
1066 `bottomToolBarHeight' (class `BottomToolBarHeight'): integer
1067 `leftToolBarWidth' (class `LeftToolBarWidth'): integer
1068 `rightToolBarWidth' (class `RightToolBarWidth'): integer
1069 Height and width of the four possible toolbars.
1070
1071 `topToolBarShadowColor' (class `TopToolBarShadowColor'): color-name
1072 `bottomToolBarShadowColor' (class `BottomToolBarShadowColor'): color-name
1073 Color of the top and bottom shadows for the toolbars. NOTE: These
1074 resources do *not* have anything to do with the top and bottom
1075 toolbars (i.e. the toolbars at the top and bottom of the frame)!
1076 Rather, they affect the top and bottom shadows around the edges of
1077 all four kinds of toolbars.
1078
1079 `topToolBarShadowPixmap' (class `TopToolBarShadowPixmap'): pixmap-name
1080 `bottomToolBarShadowPixmap' (class `BottomToolBarShadowPixmap'): pixmap-name
1081 Pixmap of the top and bottom shadows for the toolbars. If set,
1082 these resources override the corresponding color resources. NOTE:
1083 These resources do *not* have anything to do with the top and
1084 bottom toolbars (i.e. the toolbars at the top and bottom of the
1085 frame)! Rather, they affect the top and bottom shadows around the
1086 edges of all four kinds of toolbars.
1087
1088 `toolBarShadowThickness' (class `ToolBarShadowThickness'): integer
1089 Thickness of the shadows around the toolbars, in pixels.
1090
1091 `visualBell' (class `VisualBell'): boolean
1092 Whether XEmacs should flash the screen rather than making an
1093 audible beep.
1094
1095 `bellVolume' (class `BellVolume'): integer
1096 Volume of the audible beep.
1097
1098 `useBackingStore' (class `UseBackingStore'): boolean
1099 Whether XEmacs should set the backing-store attribute of the X
1100 windows it creates. This increases the memory usage of the X
1101 server but decreases the amount of X traffic necessary to update
1102 the screen, and is useful when the connection to the X server goes
1103 over a low-bandwidth line such as a modem connection.
1104
1105
1106 **** Face Resources
1107 -------------------
1108
1109 The attributes of faces are also per-frame. They can be specified as:
1110
1111 Emacs.FACE_NAME.parameter: value
1112
1113 (*do not* use `Emacs*FACE_NAME...')
1114
1115 or
1116
1117 Emacs*FRAME_NAME.FACE_NAME.parameter: value
1118
1119 Faces accept the following resources:
1120
1121 `attributeFont' (class `AttributeFont'): font-name
1122 The font of this face.
1123
1124 `attributeForeground' (class `AttributeForeground'): color-name
1125 `attributeBackground' (class `AttributeBackground'): color-name
1126 The foreground and background colors of this face.
1127
1128 `attributeBackgroundPixmap' (class `AttributeBackgroundPixmap'): file-name
1129 The name of an XBM file (or XPM file, if your version of Emacs
1130 supports XPM), to use as a background stipple.
1131
1132 `attributeUnderline' (class `AttributeUnderline'): boolean
1133 Whether text in this face should be underlined.
1134
1135 All text is displayed in some face, defaulting to the face named
1136 `default'. To set the font of normal text, use
1137 `Emacs*default.attributeFont'. To set it in the frame named `fred', use
1138 `Emacs*fred.default.attributeFont'.
1139
1140 These are the names of the predefined faces:
1141
1142 `default'
1143 Everything inherits from this.
1144
1145 `bold'
1146 If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to
1147 find a bold version of the font of the default face.
1148
1149 `italic'
1150 If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to
1151 find an italic version of the font of the default face.
1152
1153 `bold-italic'
1154 If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to
1155 find a bold-italic version of the font of the default face.
1156
1157 `modeline'
1158 This is the face that the modeline is displayed in. If not
1159 specified in the resource database, it is determined from the
1160 default face by reversing the foreground and background colors.
1161
1162 `highlight'
1163 This is the face that highlighted extents (for example, Info
1164 cross-references and possible completions, when the mouse passes
1165 over them) are displayed in.
1166
1167 `left-margin'
1168 `right-margin'
1169 These are the faces that the left and right annotation margins are
1170 displayed in.
1171
1172 `primary-selection'
1173 This is the face that mouse selections are displayed in.
1174
1175 `text-cursor'
1176 This is the face that the cursor is displayed in.
1177
1178 `isearch'
1179 This is the face that the matched text being searched for is
1180 displayed in.
1181
1182 `info-node'
1183 This is the face of info menu items. If unspecified, it is copied
1184 from `bold-italic'.
1185
1186 `info-xref'
1187 This is the face of info cross-references. If unspecified, it is
1188 copied from `bold'. (Note that, when the mouse passes over a
1189 cross-reference, the cross-reference's face is determined from a
1190 combination of the `info-xref' and `highlight' faces.)
1191
1192 Other packages might define their own faces; to see a list of all
1193 faces, use any of the interactive face-manipulation commands such as
1194 `set-face-font' and type `?' when you are prompted for the name of a
1195 face.
1196
1197 If the `bold', `italic', and `bold-italic' faces are not specified
1198 in the resource database, then XEmacs attempts to derive them from the
1199 font of the default face. It can only succeed at this if you have
1200 specified the default font using the XLFD (X Logical Font Description)
1201 format, which looks like
1202
1203 *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
1204
1205 If you use any of the other, less strict font name formats, some of
1206 which look like
1207
1208 lucidasanstypewriter-12
1209 fixed
1210 9x13
1211
1212 then XEmacs won't be able to guess the names of the bold and italic
1213 versions. All X fonts can be referred to via XLFD-style names, so you
1214 should use those forms. See the man pages for `X(1)', `xlsfonts(1)',
1215 and `xfontsel(1)'.
1216
1217
1218 **** Widgets
1219 ------------
1220
1221 There are several structural widgets between the terminal EmacsFrame
1222 widget and the top level ApplicationShell; the exact names and types of
1223 these widgets change from release to release (for example, they changed
1224 in 19.9, 19.10, 19.12, and 19.13) and are subject to further change in
1225 the future, so you should avoid mentioning them in your resource database.
1226 The above-mentioned syntaxes should be forward-compatible. As of 19.14,
1227 the exact widget hierarchy is as follows:
1228
1229 INVOCATION-NAME "shell" "container" FRAME-NAME
1230 x-emacs-application-class "TopLevelEmacsShell" "EmacsManager" "EmacsFrame"
1231
1232 (for normal frames)
1233
1234 or
1235
1236 INVOCATION-NAME "shell" "container" FRAME-NAME
1237 x-emacs-application-class "TransientEmacsShell" "EmacsManager" "EmacsFrame"
1238
1239 (for popup/dialog-box frames)
1240
1241 where INVOCATION-NAME is the terminal component of the name of the
1242 XEmacs executable (usually `xemacs'), and `x-emacs-application-class'
1243 is generally `Emacs'.
1244
1245
1246 **** Menubar Resources
1247 ----------------------
1248
1249 As the menubar is implemented as a widget which is not a part of
1250 XEmacs proper, it does not use the face mechanism for specifying fonts
1251 and colors: It uses whatever resources are appropriate to the type of
1252 widget which is used to implement it.
1253
1254 If Emacs was compiled to use only the Motif-lookalike menu widgets,
1255 then one way to specify the font of the menubar would be
1256
1257 Emacs*menubar*font: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
1258
1259 If the Motif library is being used, then one would have to use
1260
1261 Emacs*menubar*fontList: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
1262
1263 because the Motif library uses the `fontList' resource name instead
1264 of `font', which has subtly different semantics.
1265
1266 The same is true of the scrollbars: They accept whichever resources
1267 are appropriate for the toolkit in use.
1268
1269
1270 *** Source Code Highlighting
1271 ----------------------------
1272
1273 It's possible to have your buffers "decorated" with fonts or colors
1274 indicating syntactic structures (such as strings, comments, function names,
1275 "reserved words", etc.). In XEmacs, the preferred way to do this is with
1276 font-lock-mode; activate it by adding the following code to your .emacs file:
1277
1278 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
1279 (add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
1280 (add-hook 'c++-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
1281 (add-hook 'dired-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
1282 ...etc...
1283
1284 To customize it, see the descriptions of the function `font-lock-mode' and
1285 the variables `font-lock-keywords', `c-font-lock-keywords', etc.
1286
1287 There exist several other source code highlighting packages, but font-lock
1288 does does one thing that most others don't do: highlights as you type new
1289 text; and one thing that no others do: bases part of its decoration on the
1290 syntax table of the major mode. Font-lock has C-level support to do this
1291 efficiently, so it should also be significantly faster than the others.
1292
1293 If there's something that another highlighting package does that you can't
1294 make font-lock do, let us know. We would prefer to consolidate all of the
1295 desired functionality into one package rather than ship several different
1296 packages which do essentially the same thing in different ways.
1297
1298
1299 ** Differences Between XEmacs and Emacs 18
1300 ==========================================
1301
1302 Auto-configure support has been added, so it should be fairly easy to compile
1303 XEmacs on different systems. If you have any problems or feedback about
1304 compiling on your system, please let us know.
1305
1306 We have reimplemented the basic input model in a more general way; instead of
1307 X input being a special-case of the normal ASCII input stream, XEmacs has a
1308 concept of "input events", and ASCII characters are a subset of that. The
1309 events that XEmacs knows about are not X events, but are a generalization of
1310 them, so that XEmacs can eventually be ported to different window systems.
1311
1312 We have reimplemented keymaps so that sequences of events can be stored into
1313 them instead of just ASCII codes; it is possible to, for example, bind
1314 different commands to each of the chords Control-h, Control-H, Backspace,
1315 Control-Backspace, and Super-Shift-Backspace. Key bindings, function key
1316 bindings, and mouse bindings live in the same keymaps.
1317
1318 Input and display of all ISO-8859-1 characters is supported.
1319
1320 You can have multiple X windows ("frames" in XEmacs terminology).
1321
1322 XEmacs has objects called "extents" and "faces", which are roughly
1323 analogous to Epoch's "buttons," "zones," and "styles." An extent is a
1324 region of text (a start position and an end position) and a face is a
1325 collection of textual attributes like fonts and colors. Every extent
1326 is displayed in some "face", so changing the properties of a face
1327 immediately updates the display of all associated extents. Faces can
1328 be frame-local: you can have a region of text which displays with
1329 completely different attributes when its buffer is viewed from a
1330 different X window.
1331
1332 The display attributes of faces may be specified either in lisp or through
1333 the X resource manager.
1334
1335 Pixmaps of arbitrary size can be embedded in a buffer.
1336
1337 Variable width fonts work.
1338
1339 The height of a line is the height of the tallest font on that line, instead
1340 of all lines having the same height.
1341
1342 XEmacs uses the MIT "Xt" toolkit instead of raw Xlib calls, which
1343 makes it be a more well-behaved X citizen (and also improves
1344 portability). A result of this is that it is possible to include
1345 other Xt "Widgets" in the XEmacs window. Also, XEmacs understands the
1346 standard Xt command-line arguments.
1347
1348 XEmacs understands the X11 "Selection" mechanism; it's possible to define
1349 and customize selection converter functions and new selection types from
1350 Emacs Lisp, without having to recompile XEmacs.
1351
1352 XEmacs provides support for ToolTalk on systems that have it.
1353
1354 XEmacs supports the Zmacs/Lispm style of region highlighting, where the
1355 region between the point and mark is highlighted when in its "active" state.
1356
1357 XEmacs has a menubar, whose contents are customizable from emacs-lisp.
1358 This menubar looks Motif-ish, but does not require Motif. If you already
1359 own Motif, however, you can configure XEmacs to use a *real* Motif menubar
1360 instead.
1361
1362 XEmacs can ask questions using popup dialog boxes. Any command executed from
1363 a menu will ask yes/no questions with dialog boxes, while commands executed
1364 via the keyboard will use the minibuffer.
1365
1366 XEmacs has vertical and horizontal scrollbars.
1367
1368 The initial load-path is computed at run-time, instead of at compile-time.
1369 This means that if you move the XEmacs executable and associated directories
1370 to somewhere else, you don't have to recompile anything.
1371
1372 You can specify what the title of the XEmacs windows and icons should be
1373 with the variables `frame-title-format' and `frame-icon-title-format',
1374 which have the same syntax as `mode-line-format'.
1375
1376 XEmacs now supports floating-point numbers.
1377
1378 XEmacs now knows about timers directly, instead of them being simulated by
1379 a subprocess.
1380
1381 XEmacs understands truenames, and can be configured to notice when you are
1382 visiting two names of the same file. See the variables find-file-use-truenames
1383 and find-file-compare-truenames.
1384
1385 If you're running on a machine with audio hardware, you can specify sound
1386 files for XEmacs to play instead of the default X beep. See the documentation
1387 of the function load-sound-file and the variable sound-alist.
1388
1389 An XEmacs frame can be placed within an "external client widget" managed by
1390 another application. This allows an application to use an XEmacs frame as its
1391 text pane rather than the standard Text widget that is provided with Motif or
1392 Athena. XEmacs supports Motif applications, generic Xt (e.g. Athena)
1393 applications, and raw Xlib applications.
1394
1395 Random changes to the emacs-lisp library: (some of this was not written by
1396 us, but is included because it's free software and we think it's good stuff)
1397
1398 - there is a new optimizing byte-compiler
1399 - there is a new abbrev-based mail-alias mechanism
1400 - the -*- line can contain local-variable settings
1401 - there is a new TAGS package
1402 - there is a new VI-emulation mode (viper)
1403 - there is a new implementation of Dired
1404 - there is a new implementation of Isearch
1405 - the VM package for reading mail is provided
1406 - the W3 package for browsing the World Wide Web hypertext information
1407 system is provided
1408 - the Hyperbole package, a programmable information management and
1409 hypertext system
1410 - the OO-Browser package, a multi-language object-oriented browser
1411
1412 There are many more specifics in the "Miscellaneous Changes" section, below.
1413
1414 The online Emacs Manual and Emacs-Lisp Manual are now both relatively
1415 up-to-date.
1416
1417 * XEmacs Release Notes
1418 ======================
1419
1420 ** Future Plans for XEmacs
1421 ==========================
1422
1423 For the curious, the biggest changes in 19.15 will include integration
1424 of TM (a MIME package for VM and GNUS), EFS (the next generation of
1425 ange-ftp), and Auc-TeX, and a "lite" distribution that includes a
1426 minimal base and a set of optional packages (which will include TM,
1427 EFS, and Auc-TeX, as well as all of the large packages currently
1428 distributed with XEmacs). There will also still be a full distribution
1429 that includes all the optional packages.
1430
1431 In the longer term, we are also working on a separate branch of XEmacs that
1432 includes full Asian-language ("MULE") support. This work is currently in
1433 beta and is being supported by Sun Microsystems.
1434
1435
1436 ** Major Differences Between 19.13 and 19.14
1437 ============================================
1438
1439 XEmacs has a new address! The canonical ftp site is now
1440 ftp.xemacs.org:/pub/xemacs and the Web page is now at
1441 http://www.xemacs.org/. All mailing lists now have @xemacs.org
1442 addresses. For the time being the @cs.uiuc.edu addresses will
1443 continue to function.
1444
1445 This is a major new release. Many features have been added, as well
1446 as many bugs fixed. The Motif menubar has still _NOT_ been fixed for
1447 19.14. You should use the Lucid menubar instead.
1448
1449
1450
1451 Major user-visible changes:
1452 ---------------------------
1453
1454 -- Color support in TTY mode is provided. You have to have a TTY capable
1455 of displaying them, such as color xterm or the console under Linux.
1456 If your terminal type supports colors (e.g. `xterm-color'), XEmacs
1457 will automatically notice this and start using color.
1458
1459 -- blink-cursor-mode enables a blinking text cursor. There is a
1460 menubar option for this also.
1461
1462 -- auto-show-mode is turned on by default; this means that XEmacs
1463 will automatically scroll a window horizontally as necessary to
1464 keep point in view.
1465
1466 -- a file dialog box is provided and will be used whenever you
1467 are prompted for a filename as a result of a menubar selection.
1468
1469 -- XEmacs can be compiled with built-in GIF, JPEG, and PNG support.
1470 The GIF libraries are supplied with XEmacs; for JPEG and PNG,
1471 you have to obtain the appropriate libraries (this is well-
1472 documented). This makes image display much easier and faster under
1473 W3 (the web browser) and TM (adds MIME support to VM and GNUS;
1474 not yet included with XEmacs but will be in 19.15).
1475
1476 -- XEmacs provides a really nice mode (PSGML with "Wing improvements")
1477 for editing HTML and other SGML documents. It parses the document,
1478 and as a result it does proper indentation, can show you the context
1479 you're in, the allowed tags at a particular position, etc.
1480
1481 -- XEmacs comes standard with modes for editing Java and VRML code,
1482 including font-lock support.
1483
1484 -- GNUS 5.2 comes standard with XEmacs.
1485
1486 -- You can now embed colors in the modeline, with different sections
1487 of the modeline responding appropriately to various mouse gestures:
1488 For example, clicking on the "read-only" indicator toggles the
1489 read-only status of a buffer, and clicking on the buffer name
1490 cycles to the next buffer. Pressing button3 on these areas brings
1491 up a popup menu of appropriate commands.
1492
1493 -- There is a much nicer mode for completion lists and such.
1494 At the minibuffer prompt, if you hit page-up or Meta-V, the completion
1495 buffer will be displayed (if it wasn't already), you're moved into
1496 it, and can move around and select filenames using the arrow keys
1497 and the return key. Rather than a cursor, a filename is highlighted,
1498 and the arrow keys change which filename is highlighted.
1499
1500 -- The edit-faces subsystem has also been much improved, in somewhat
1501 similar ways to the completion list improvements.
1502
1503 -- Many improvements were made to the multi-device support.
1504 We now provide an auxiliary utility called "gnuattach" that
1505 lets you connect to an existing XEmacs process and display
1506 a TTY frame on the current TTY connection, and commands
1507 `make-frame-on-display' (with a corresponding menubar entry)
1508 and `make-frame-on-tty' for more easily creating frames on
1509 new TTY or X connections.
1510
1511 -- We have incorporated nearly all of the functionality of GNU Emacs
1512 19.30 into XEmacs. This includes support for lazy-loaded
1513 byte code and documentation strings, improved paragraph filling,
1514 better support for margins within documents, v19 regular expression
1515 routines (including caching of compiled regexps), etc.
1516
1517 -- In accordance with GNU Emacs 19.30, the following key binding
1518 changes have been made:
1519
1520 C-x ESC -> C-x ESC ESC
1521 ESC ESC -> ESC :
1522 ESC ESC ESC is "abort anything" (keyboard-escape-quit).
1523
1524 -- All major packages have been updated to their latest-released
1525 versions.
1526
1527 -- XEmacs now gracefully handles a full colormap (such as typically
1528 results when running Netscape). The nearest available color
1529 is automatically substituted.
1530
1531 -- Many bug fixes to the subprocess/PTY code, ps-print, menubar
1532 functions, `set-text-properties', DEC Alpha support, toolbar
1533 resizing (the "phantom VM toolbar" bug), and lots and lots
1534 of other things were made.
1535
1536 -- The ncurses library (a replacement for curses, found especially
1537 under Linux) is supported, and will be automatically used
1538 if it can be found.
1539
1540 -- You can now undo in the minibuffer.
1541
1542 -- Surrogate minibuffers now work. These are also sometimes referred
1543 to as "global" minibuffers.
1544
1545 -- font-lock has been merged with GNU Emacs 19.30, improved defaults
1546 have been added, and changes have been made to the way it is
1547 configured.
1548
1549 -- Many, many modes have menubar entries for them.
1550
1551 -- `recover-session' lets you recover whatever files can be recovered
1552 after your XEmacs process has died unexpectedly.
1553
1554 -- C-h k followed by a toolbar button press correctly reports
1555 the binding of the toolbar button.
1556
1557 -- `function-key-map', `key-translation-map', and `keyboard-translate-table'
1558 are now correctly implemented.
1559
1560 -- `show-message-log' (and its menubar entry under Edit) have been
1561 removed; instead use `view-lossage' (and its menubar entry under
1562 Help).
1563
1564 -- There is a standard menubar entry for specifying which browser
1565 (Netscape, W3, Mosaic, etc.) to use when dispatching URL's
1566 in mail, Usenet news, etc.
1567
1568 -- Improved native sound support under Linux.
1569
1570 -- Lots of other things we forgot to mention.
1571
1572
1573
1574 Significant Lisp-level changes:
1575 -------------------------------
1576
1577 -- Many improvements to the E-Lisp documentation have been made;
1578 it should now be up-to-date and complete in nearly all cases.
1579
1580 -- XEmacs has extensive documentation on its internals, for
1581 would-be C hackers.
1582
1583 -- Common-Lisp support (the CL package) is now dumped standard
1584 into XEmacs. No more need for (require 'cl) or anything
1585 like that.
1586
1587 -- Full support for extents and text properties over strings is
1588 provided.
1589
1590 -- The extent properties `start-open', `end-open', `start-closed',
1591 and `end-closed' now work correctly w.r.t. text properties.
1592
1593 -- The `face' property of extents and text properties can now
1594 be a list.
1595
1596 -- The `mouse-face' property from FSF GNU Emacs is now supported.
1597 It supersedes the `highlight' property.
1598
1599 -- `enriched' and `facemenu' packages from FSF GNU Emacs have been ported.
1600
1601 -- New functions for easier creation of dialog boxes:
1602 `get-dialog-box-response', `message-box', and `message-or-box'.
1603
1604 -- `function-min-args' and `function-max-args' allow you to determine
1605 the minimum and maximum allowed arguments for any type of
1606 function (i.e. subr, lambda expression, byte-compiled function, etc.).
1607
1608 -- Some C-level support for doing E-Lisp profiling is provided.
1609 See `start-profiling', `stop-profiling', and
1610 `pretty-print-profiling-info'.
1611
1612 -- `current-process-time' reports the user, system, and real times
1613 for the currently running XEmacs process.
1614
1615 -- `next-window', `previous-window', `next-frame', `previous-frame',
1616 `other-window', `get-lru-window', etc. have an extra device
1617 argument that allows you to restrict which devices it includes
1618 (normally all devices). Some functions that incorrectly ignored
1619 frames on different devices (e.g. C-x 0) are fixed.
1620
1621 -- new functions `run-hook-with-args-until-success',
1622 `run-hook-with-args-until-failure'.
1623
1624 -- generalized facility for local vs. global hooks. See `make-local-hook',
1625 `add-hook'.
1626
1627 -- New functions for querying the window tree: `frame-leftmost-window',
1628 `frame-rightmost-window', `window-first-hchild', `window-first-vchild',
1629 `window-next-child', `window-previous-child', and `window-parent'.
1630
1631 -- Epoch support works. This gets you direct access to some X events
1632 and objects (e.g. properties and property-notify events).
1633
1634 -- The multi-device support has been majorly revamped. There is now
1635 a new concept of "consoles" (devices grouped together under a
1636 common keyboard/mouse), console-local variables, and a generalized
1637 concept of device/console connection.
1638
1639 -- `display-buffer' synched with GNU Emacs 19.30, giving you lots of
1640 wondrous cruft such as
1641 -- unsplittable frames
1642 -- pop-up-frames, pop-up-frame-function
1643 -- special-display-buffer-names, special-display-regexps,
1644 special-display-function
1645 -- same-window-buffer-names, same-window-regexps
1646
1647 -- XEmacs has support for accessing DBM- and/or DB-format databases,
1648 provided that you have the appropriate libraries on your system.
1649
1650 -- There is a new font style: "strikethru" fonts.
1651
1652 -- New data type "weak list", which is a list with special
1653 garbage-collection properties, similar to weak hash tables.
1654
1655 -- `set-face-parent' makes one face inherit all properties from another.
1656
1657 -- The junky frame parameters mechanism has been revamped as
1658 frame properties, which a standard property-list interface.
1659
1660 -- Lots and lots of functions for working with property lists have
1661 been added.
1662
1663 -- New functions `push-window-configuration', `pop-window-configuration',
1664 `unpop-window-configuration' for maintain a stack of window
1665 configurations.
1666
1667 -- Many fixups to the glyph code; icons and mouse pointers are now
1668 properly merged into the glyph mechanism.
1669
1670 -- `set-specifier' works more sensibly, like `set-face-property'.
1671
1672 -- Many new specifiers for individually controlling toolbar height/width
1673 and visibility and text cursor visibility.
1674
1675 -- New face `text-cursor' controls the colors of the text cursor.
1676
1677 -- Many new variables for turning on debug information about the
1678 inner workings of XEmacs.
1679
1680 -- Hash tables can now compare their keys using `equal' or `eql'
1681 as well as `eq'.
1682
1683 -- Other things too numerous to mention.
1684
1685
1686
1687 Significant configuration/build changes:
1688 ----------------------------------------
1689
1690 -- You can disable TTY support, toolbar support, scrollbar support,
1691 menubar support, and/or dialog box support at configure time
1692 to save memory.
1693
1694 -- New configure option `--extra-verbose' shows the diagnostic
1695 output from feature testing; this should help track down
1696 problems with incorrect feature detection.
1697
1698 -- `dont-have-xmu' is now `with-xmu', with the reversed sense.
1699 (It defaults to `yes'.)
1700
1701 -- `with-mocklisp' lets you add Mocklisp support if you really
1702 need this.
1703
1704 -- `with-term' for adding TERM support for Linux users.
1705
1706
1707
1708 ** Major Differences Between 19.12 and 19.13
1709 ============================================
1710
1711 This is primarily a bug-fix release. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
1712 Hopefully only a few have been introduced. The most noteworthy bug
1713 fixes are:
1714
1715 -- There should be no more problems connecting XEmacs to an X
1716 server over SLIP or other slow connections.
1717 -- Periodic crashes when using the Buffers menu should be gone.
1718 -- etags would sometimes erase the current buffer; it doesn't
1719 any more.
1720 -- XEmacs will correctly exit if the X server dies.
1721 -- uniconified frames are displayed properly under TVTWM.
1722 -- Breakage in `add-menu-item' / `add-menu-button' is fixed.
1723
1724 The Motif menubar has _NOT_ been fixed for 19.13. You should use the
1725 Lucid menubar instead.
1726
1727 Multi-device support should now be working properly. You can now open
1728 an X device after having started out on a TTY device.
1729
1730 Background pixmaps now work. See `set-face-background-pixmap'.
1731
1732 Echo area messages are now saved to a buffer, " *Message Log*". To
1733 see this buffer, use the command `show-message-log'. It is possible
1734 to filter the message which are actually included by modifying the
1735 variables `log-message-ignore-regexps' and `log-message-ignore-labels'.
1736
1737 You can now control which warnings you want to see. See
1738 `display-warning-suppressed-classes' and friends.
1739
1740 You can now set the default location of an "other window" from the
1741 Options menu.
1742
1743 "Save Options" now saves the state of all faces.
1744
1745 You can choose which file "Save Options" writes into; see
1746 `save-options-file'.
1747
1748 XPM support is no longer required for the toolbar.
1749
1750 The relocating allocator is now enabled by default whenever possible.
1751 This allows buffer memory to be returned to the system when no longer
1752 in use which helps keep XEmacs process size down.
1753
1754 The ability to have captioned toolbars has been added. Currently only
1755 the default toolbar actually has a captioned version provided. A new
1756 specifier variable, `toolbar-buttons-captioned-p' controls whether the
1757 toolbar is captioned.
1758
1759 A copy of the XEmacs FAQ is now included and is available through info.
1760
1761 The on-line E-Lisp reference manual has been significantly updated.
1762
1763 There is now audio support under Linux.
1764
1765 Modifier keys can now be sticky. This is controlled by the variable
1766 `modifier-keys-are-sticky'.
1767
1768 manual-entry should now work correctly under Irix with the penalty of
1769 a longer startup time the first time it is invoked. If you are having
1770 problems with this on another system try setting
1771 `Manual-use-subdirectory-list' to t.
1772
1773 make-tty-device no longer automatically creates the first frame.
1774
1775 Rectangular regions now work correctly.
1776
1777 ediff no longer sets synchronize-minibuffers to t unless you first set
1778 ediff-synchronize-minibuffers
1779
1780 keyboard-translate-table has been implemented. This means that the
1781 `enable-flow-control' command for dealing with TTY connections that
1782 filter out ^S and ^Q now works.
1783
1784 You can now create frames that are initially unmapped and frames that
1785 are "transient for another frame", meaning that they behave more like
1786 dialog-box frames.
1787
1788 Other E-Lisp changes:
1789
1790 -- Specifier `menubar-visible-p' for controlling menubar visibility
1791 -- Local command hooks should be set using `local-pre-command-hook'
1792 and `local-post-command-hook' instead of making the global
1793 equivalents be buffer-local.
1794 -- `quit-char', `help-char', `meta-prefix-char' can be any key specifier
1795 instead of just an integer.
1796 -- new functions `add-async-timeout' and `disable-async-timeout'.
1797 These let you create asynchronous timeouts, which are like
1798 normal timeouts except that they're executed even during
1799 running Lisp code. Use this with care!
1800 -- `debug-on-error' and `stack-trace-on-error' now enter the debugger
1801 only when an *unhandled* error occurs. If you want the old
1802 behavior, use `debug-on-signal' and `stack-trace-on-signal'.
1803 -- \U, \L, \u, \l, \E recognized specially in `replace-match'.
1804 These are standard ex/perl commands for changing the case of
1805 replaced text.
1806 -- New function event-matches-key-specifier-p. This provides
1807 a clean way of comparing keypress events with key specifiers
1808 such as 65, (shift home), etc. without having to resort
1809 to ugly `character-to-event' / `event-to-character' hacks.
1810 -- New function `add-to-list'
1811 -- New Common-Lisp functions `some', `every', `notevery', `notany',
1812 `adjoin', `union', `intersection', `set-difference',
1813 `set-exclusive-or', `subsetp'
1814 -- `remove-face-property' provides a clean way of removing a
1815 face property.
1816
1817 Many of the Emacs Lisp packages have been updated. Some of the new
1818 Emacs Lisp packages ---
1819
1820 ada-mode: major mode for editing Ada source
1821
1822 arc-mode: simple editing of archives
1823
1824 auto-show-mode: automatically scrolls horizontally to keep point on-screen
1825
1826 completion: dynamic word completion mode
1827
1828 dabbrev: the dynamic abbrev package has been rewritten and is much
1829 more powerful -- e.g. it searches in other buffers as well
1830 as the current one
1831
1832 easymenu: menu support package
1833
1834 live-icon: makes frame icons represent the current frame contents
1835
1836 mailcrypt 3.2: mail encryption with PGP; included but v2.4 is still
1837 the default
1838
1839 two-column: for editing two-column text
1840
1841
1842 ** Major Differences Between 19.11 and 19.12
1843 ============================================
1844
1845 This is a huge new release. Almost every aspect of XEmacs has been changed
1846 at least somewhat. The highlights are:
1847
1848 -- TTY support (includes face support)
1849 -- new redisplay engine; should be faster, less buggy, and more powerful
1850 -- terminology change from "screen" to "frame"
1851 -- built-in toolbar
1852 -- toolbar support added to many packages
1853 -- multiple device support (still in beta; improvements to come in
1854 19.13)
1855 -- Purify used to ensure that there are no memory leaks or memory corruption
1856 problems
1857 -- horizontal and vertical scrollbars in all windows
1858 -- new Lucid (i.e. look-alike Motif) scrollbar widget
1859 -- stay-up menus in the Lucid (look-alike Motif) menubar widget
1860 -- 3-d modeline
1861 -- new extents engine; should be faster, less buggy, and more powerful
1862 -- much more powerful control over faces
1863 -- expanded menubar
1864 -- more work on synching with GNU Emacs 19.28
1865 -- new packages: Hyperbole, OOBR (object browser), hm--html-menus, viper,
1866 lazy-lock.el, ksh-mode.el, rsz-minibuf.el
1867 -- package updates for all major packages
1868 -- dynodump package for Solaris: provides proper undumping and portable
1869 binaries across different OS versions and machine types
1870 -- Greatly expanded concept of "glyphs" (pixmaps etc. in a buffer)
1871 -- built-in support for displaying X-Faces, if the X-Face library is
1872 available
1873 -- built-in support for SOCKS if the SOCKS library is available
1874 -- graceful behavior when the colormap is full (e.g. Netscape ate
1875 all the colors)
1876 -- built-in MD5 (secure hashing function) support
1877
1878
1879 More specific information:
1880
1881 *** TTY Support
1882 ---------------
1883
1884 The long-awaited TTY support is now available. XEmacs will start up
1885 in TTY mode (using the tty you started XEmacs from) if the DISPLAY
1886 environment variable is not set or if you use the `-nw' option.
1887
1888 Faces are available on TTY's. For a demonstration, try editing a C
1889 file and turning on font-lock-mode.
1890
1891 You can also connect to additional TTY's using `make-tty-device',
1892 whether your first frame was a TTY or an X window. This ability is
1893 not yet completely finished.
1894
1895 The full event-loop capabilities (processes, timeouts, etc.) are
1896 available on TTY's.
1897
1898
1899
1900 *** New Redisplay Engine
1901 ------------------------
1902
1903 The redisplay engine has been rewritten to improve its efficiency and
1904 to increase its functionality. It should also be significantly more
1905 bug-free than the previous redisplay engine.
1906
1907 A line that is not big enough to display at the bottom of the window
1908 will normally be clipped (so that it is partially visible) rather than
1909 not displayed at all. The variable `pixel-vertical-clip-threshold'
1910 can be used to control the minimum space that must be available for a
1911 line to be clipped rather than not displayed at all.
1912
1913 Tabs are displayed in such a way that things line up fairly well even
1914 in the presence of variable-width fonts and/or lines with
1915 multiply-sized fonts.
1916
1917 Display tables are implemented, through the specifier variable
1918 `current-display-table'. They can be buffer-local, window-local,
1919 frame-local, or device-local. See below for info about specifiers.
1920
1921
1922
1923 *** Toolbar
1924 -----------
1925
1926 There is now built-in support for a toolbar. A sample toolbar is
1927 visible by default at the top of the frame. Four separate toolbars
1928 can be configured (at the top, bottom, left, and right of the frame).
1929 The toolbar specification is similar to the menubar specification.
1930 The up, down, and disabled glyphs of a toolbar button can be
1931 separately controlled. Explanatory text can be echoed in the echo
1932 area when the mouse passes over a toolbar button. The size, contents,
1933 and visibility of the various toolbars can be controlled on a
1934 per-buffer, per-window, per-frame, and per-device basis through the
1935 use of specifiers. See the chapter on toolbars in the Lisp Reference
1936 Manual (included with XEmacs) for more information.
1937
1938 The toolbar color and shadow thicknesses are currently controlled only
1939 through `modify-frame-parameters' and through X resources. We are
1940 planning on making these controllable through specifiers as well. (Our
1941 hope is to make `modify-frame-parameters' obsolete, as it is a clunky
1942 and not very powerful mechanism.)
1943
1944 Info, GNUS, VM, W3, and various other packages include custom toolbars
1945 with them.
1946
1947
1948
1949 *** Menubar
1950 -----------
1951
1952 Stay-up menus are implemented in the look-alike Motif menubar.
1953
1954 The default menubar has been expanded to include most commonly-used
1955 functions in XEmacs.
1956
1957 The options menu has been greatly expanded to include many more
1958 options.
1959
1960 The menubar specification format has been greatly expanded. Per-menu
1961 activation hooks can be specified through the :filter keyword (thus
1962 obsoleting `activate-menubar-hook'); this allows for fast response
1963 time when you have a large and complex menu. You can dynamically
1964 control whether menu items are present through the :included and
1965 :config keywords. (The latter keyword implements a simple menubar
1966 configuration scheme, in conjunction with the variable
1967 `menubar-configuration'.) Many different menu-item separators (single
1968 or double line; solid or dashed; flat, etched-in, or etched-out) are
1969 available. See the chapter on menus in the Lisp Reference Manual for
1970 more information about all of this.
1971
1972 New functions `add-submenu' and `add-menu-button' are available.
1973 These supersede the older `add-menu' and `add-menu-item' functions,
1974 and provide a more powerful and consistent interface.
1975
1976 New convenience functions for popping up the part or all of the
1977 menubar in a pop-up menu are available: `popup-menubar-menu' and
1978 `popup-buffer-menu'.
1979
1980 Menus are now incrementally constructed greatly improving menubar
1981 response time.
1982
1983
1984
1985 *** Scrollbars
1986 --------------
1987
1988 A look-alike Motif scrollbar is now included with XEmacs. No longer
1989 will you have to suffer with ugly Athena scrollbars.
1990
1991 Windows can now have horizontal scrollbars. Normally they are visible
1992 when the window's buffer is set to truncate lines rather than wrap
1993 them (e.g. `(setq truncate-lines t)').
1994
1995 All windows, not only the right-most ones, can have vertical
1996 scrollbars.
1997
1998 The functions to change a scrollbar's width have been superseded by
1999 the specifier variables `scrollbar-width' and `scrollbar-height'.
2000 This allows their values to be controlled on a buffer-local,
2001 window-local, frame-local, and device-local basis. See below.
2002
2003 The scrollbars interact better with the event loop (for example, you
2004 can type `C-h k', do a scrollbar action, and see a description of this
2005 scrollbar action printed as if you had pressed a key sequence or
2006 selected a menu item).
2007
2008 The scrollbar behavior can be reprogrammed, by advising the
2009 `scrollbar-*' functions.
2010
2011
2012
2013 *** Key Bindings
2014 ----------------
2015
2016 The oft-used function `goto-line' now has its own binding: M-g.
2017
2018 New bindings are available for scrolling the "other" window: M-next,
2019 M-prior, M-home, M-end. (On many keyboards, `next' and `prior'
2020 labelled `PgUp' and `PgDn'.)
2021
2022 You can reactivate a deactivated Zmacs region, without having any
2023 other effects, with the binding M-C-z.
2024
2025 The bindings `M-u', `M-l', and `M-c' now work on the region (if a
2026 region is active) or work on a word, as before.
2027
2028 Shift-Control-G forces a "critical quit", which drops immediately into
2029 the debugger; see below.
2030
2031
2032
2033 *** Modeline
2034 ------------
2035
2036 The modeline can now have a 3-d look; this is enabled by default. The
2037 specifier variable `modeline-shadow-thickness' controls the size.
2038
2039 The modeline can now be turned off on a per-buffer, per-window,
2040 per-frame, or per-device basis. The specifier variable
2041 `has-modeline-p' controls whether the modeline is visible. See below
2042 for details about the vastly powerful specifier mechanism.
2043
2044 The modeline functions and variables have been renamed to be
2045 `*-modeline-*' rather than `*-mode-line-*'. Aliases are provided for
2046 all the old names.
2047
2048 Variable width fonts now work correctly when used in the modeline.
2049
2050
2051
2052 *** Minibuffer, Echo Area
2053 -------------------------
2054
2055 The minibuffer is no longer constrained to be one line high. The
2056 package rsz-minibuf.el is included to automatically resize the
2057 minibuffer when its contents are too big; enable this with
2058 `resize-minibuffer-mode'.
2059
2060 The echo area is now a true buffer, called " *Echo Area*". This
2061 allows you to customize the echo area behavior through
2062 before-change-functions and after-change-functions.
2063
2064
2065
2066 *** Specifiers
2067 --------------
2068
2069 XEmacs has a new concept called "specifiers", used to configure most
2070 display options (toolbar size and contents, scrollbar size, face
2071 properties, modeline visibility and shadow-thickness, glyphs, display
2072 tables, etc.). We are planning on converting all display
2073 characteristics to use specifiers, and obsoleting the clunky functions
2074 `frame-parameters' and `modify-frame-parameters'. Specifically:
2075
2076 -- You can specify values (called "instantiators") for particular
2077 "locales" (i.e. buffers, windows, frames, devices, or a global value).
2078 When determining what the actual value (or "instance") of a specifier
2079 is, the specifications that are provided are searched from most
2080 specific (i.e. buffer-local) to most general (i.e. global), looking
2081 for a matching one.
2082
2083 -- You can specify multiple instantiators for a particular locale.
2084 For example, when specifying what the foreground color of a face
2085 is in a particular buffer, you could specify two instantiators:
2086 "dark sea green" and "green". The color would then be dark sea
2087 green on devices that recognize that color, and green on other
2088 devices. You have effectively provided a fallback value to make
2089 sure you get reasonable behavior on all devices.
2090
2091 -- You can add one or more tags to an instantiator, where a tag
2092 is a symbol that has been previously registered with XEmacs.
2093 This allows you to identify your instantiators for later
2094 removal in a way that won't interfere with other applications
2095 using the same specifier. Furthermore, particular tags can
2096 be restricted to match only particular sorts of devices.
2097 Any tagged instantiator will be ignored if the device over which
2098 it is being instanced does not match any of its tags. This
2099 allows you, for example, to restrict an instantiator to a
2100 particular device type (X or TTY) and/or class (color, grayscale,
2101 or mono). (You might want to specify, for example, that a
2102 particular face is displayed in green on color devices and is
2103 underlined on mono devices.)
2104
2105 -- A full API is provided for manipulating specifiers, and full
2106 documentation is provided in the Lisp Reference Manual.
2107
2108
2109
2110 *** Basic Lisp Stuff
2111 --------------------
2112
2113 Common-Lisp backquote syntax is recognized. For example, the old
2114 expression
2115
2116 (` (a b (, c)))
2117
2118 can now be written
2119
2120 `(a b ,c)
2121
2122 The old backquote syntax is still accepted.
2123
2124 The new function `type-of' returns a symbol describing the type of a
2125 Lisp object (`integer', `string', `symbol', etc.)
2126
2127 Symbols beginning with a colon (called "keywords") are treated
2128 specially in that they are automatically made self-evaluating when
2129 they are interned into `obarray'. The new function `keywordp' returns
2130 whether a symbol begins with a colon.
2131
2132 `get', `put', and `remprop' have been generalized to allow you to set
2133 and retrieve properties on many different kinds of objects: symbols,
2134 strings, faces, glyphs, and extents (for extents, however, this is not
2135 yet implemented). They are joined by a new function `object-props'
2136 that returns all of the properties that have been set on an object.
2137
2138 New functions `plists-eq' and `plists-equal' are provided for
2139 comparing property lists (a property list is an alternating list
2140 of keys and values).
2141
2142 The Common-Lisp functions `caar', `cadr', `cdar', `cddr', `caaar', etc.
2143 (up to four a's and/or d's), `first', `second', `third', etc. (up to
2144 `tenth'), `last', `rest', and `endp' have been added, for more
2145 convenient manipulation of lists.
2146
2147 New function `mapvector' maps over a sequence and returns a vector
2148 of the results, analogous to `mapcar'.
2149
2150 New functions `rassoc', `remassoc', `remassq', `remrassoc', and
2151 `remrassq' are provided for working with alists.
2152
2153 New functions `defvaralias', `variable-alias' and `indirect-variable'
2154 are provided for creating variable aliases.
2155
2156 Strings have a modified-tick that is bumped every time a string
2157 is modified in-place with `aset' or `fillarray'. This is retrieved
2158 with the new function `string-modified-tick'.
2159
2160 New macro `push' destructively adds an element to the beginning of a
2161 list. New macro `pop' destructively removes and returns the first
2162 element of a list.
2163
2164
2165
2166 *** Buffers
2167 -----------
2168
2169 Most functions that operate on buffer text now take an optional BUFFER
2170 argument, specifying which buffer they operate on. (Previously, they
2171 always operated on the current buffer.)
2172
2173 The new function `transpose-regions' is provided, ported from GNU
2174 Emacs.
2175
2176 The new function `save-current-buffer' works like `save-excursion'
2177 but only saves the current buffer, not the location of point in
2178 that buffer.
2179
2180
2181
2182 *** Devices
2183 -----------
2184
2185 XEmacs has a new concept of "device", which is represents a particular
2186 X display or TTY connection. `make-frame' has a new, optional device
2187 parameter that allows you to specify which device the frame is to be
2188 created on.
2189
2190 Multiple simultaneous TTY and/or X connections may be made. The
2191 specifier mechanism provides reasonable behavior of glyphs, faces,
2192 etc. over heterogeneous device types and over devices whose individual
2193 capabilities may vary.
2194
2195 There is also a device type called "stream" that represents a STDIO
2196 device that has no redisplay or cursor-motion capabilities, such as
2197 the "glass terminal" that XEmacs uses when it is run noninteractively.
2198 There is not all that much you can do with stream devices currently;
2199 please let us know if there are good uses you can think of for this
2200 capability. (For example, log files?)
2201
2202 A new device API is provided. Functions are provided such as
2203 `device-name' (the name of the device, which generally is based on the
2204 X display or TTY file name), `device-type' (X, TTY, or stream),
2205 `device-class' (color, grayscale, or mono), etc. See the Lisp
2206 Reference Manual.
2207
2208 Many functions have been extended to contain an additional, optional
2209 device argument, where such an extension makes sense. In general, if
2210 the argument is omitted, it is equivalent to specifying
2211 `(selected-device)'.
2212
2213 Many previous functions and variables are obsoleted in favor of the
2214 device API. For example, `window-system' is obsoleted by
2215 `device-type', and `x-color-display-p' and friends are obsoleted by
2216 `device-class'.
2217
2218 ** NOTE **: The obsolete variable `window-system' is going
2219 to be deleted soon, probably in 19.14. Please correct all
2220 your code to use `device-type'.
2221
2222 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The function `x-display-visual-class'
2223 returns different values from previous versions of XEmacs.
2224
2225
2226
2227 *** Errors, Warnings, C-g
2228 -------------------------
2229
2230 There is a new warnings system implemented. Many warnings that were
2231 formerly displayed in various ad-hoc ways (e.g. warnings about screwy
2232 modifier mappings, messages about failures handling the mouse cursor
2233 and errors in a gc-hook) have been regularized through this system.
2234 The new function `warn' displays a warning before the next redisplay
2235 (the actually display of the warning messages is accomplished through
2236 `display-warning-buffer'). Both `warn' and `display-warning-buffer'
2237 are Lisp functions (the C code calls out to them as necessary), and
2238 thus you can customize the warning system.
2239
2240 Under an X display, you can press Shift-Control-G to force a "critical
2241 quit". This will immediately display a backtrace and pop you into the
2242 debugger, regardless of the settings of `inhibit-quit' and
2243 `debug-on-quit'.
2244
2245 C-g now works properly even on systems that don't implement SIGIO or
2246 for which SIGIO is broken (e.g. IRIX 5.3 and older versions of Linux).
2247 In addition, the SIGIO support has been fixed for many systems on
2248 which it didn't always work properly before (e.g. HPUX and Solaris).
2249
2250
2251
2252 *** Events
2253 ----------
2254
2255 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: Many event functions have been changed to
2256 accept and return windows instead of frames.
2257
2258 New function: `event-live-p', specifying whether `deallocate-event'
2259 has been called on an event.
2260
2261 The "menu event" type has been renamed to "misc-user event", and
2262 encompasses scrollbar events as well as menu events. We are planning
2263 on making it also encompass toolbar events in a future release.
2264
2265 New functions are provided for determining whether an particular
2266 sections of a frame: `event-over-border-p', `event-over-glyph-p',
2267 `event-over-modeline-p', `event-over-text-area-p', and
2268 `event-over-toolbar-p'. The old, kludgey methods of checking the
2269 window-height, the internal-border-width, etc. are unreliable and
2270 should not be used.
2271
2272 New functions `event-window-x-pixel' and `event-window-y-pixel' are
2273 provided for determining where in a particular window an event
2274 happened.
2275
2276 New functions `event-glyph-x-pixel' and `event-glyph-y-pixel' are
2277 provided for determining where in a particular glyph an event
2278 happened.
2279
2280 New function `event-closest-point', which returns the closest buffer
2281 position to the event even if the event did not occur over any text.
2282
2283 New variable `unread-command-events', superseding the older
2284 `unread-command-event'.
2285
2286 Many event-loop bugs have been fixed.
2287
2288
2289
2290 *** Extents
2291 -----------
2292
2293 The extent code has been largely rewritten. It should be faster and
2294 more reliable.
2295
2296 The text-property implementation has been greatly improved.
2297
2298 Some new extent primitives are provided to return the position of the
2299 next or previous property change in a buffer.
2300
2301 Extents can now have a parent specified; then all of its properties
2302 (except for the buffer it's in and its position in that buffer) come
2303 from that extent. Hierarchies of such extents can be created.
2304
2305 Extents now have a `detachable' property that controls what happens
2306 (they either get detached or shrink down to zero-length) when their
2307 text is deleted. Previously, such extents would always be detached.
2308
2309 The `invisible' property on extents now works.
2310
2311 `map-extents' has three additional parameters that provide more
2312 control over which extents are mapped.
2313
2314 `map-extents' deals better with changes made to extents in the
2315 buffer being mapped over.
2316
2317 A new function `mapcar-extents' (an alternative to `map-extents') has
2318 been provided and should be easier to use than `map-extents'.
2319
2320
2321
2322 *** Faces
2323 ---------
2324
2325 Faces can now be buffer-local, window-local, and device-local as well
2326 as frame-local, and can be further restricted to a particular device
2327 type or class. The way in which faces can be controlled is now based
2328 on the general and powerful specifier mechanism; see above.
2329
2330 The new function `set-face-property' generalizes `set-face-font',
2331 `set-face-foreground', etc. and takes many new optional arguments, in
2332 accordance with the new specifier mechanism.
2333
2334 The new functions `face-property' and `face-property-instance'
2335 generalize `face-font', `face-foreground', etc. and take many new
2336 optional arguments, in accordance with the new specifier mechanism.
2337 (`face-property' returns the value, if any, that was specified for a
2338 particular locale, and `face-property-instance' returns the actual
2339 value that will be used for display. See the section on specifiers.)
2340
2341 The functions `face-font', `face-foreground', `face-background',
2342 `set-face-font', `set-face-foreground', `set-face-background',
2343 etc. are now convenience functions, trivially implemented using
2344 `face-property' and `set-face-property' and take new optioanl
2345 arguments in accordance with those functions. New convenience
2346 functions `face-font-instance', `face-foreground-instance',
2347 `face-background-instance', etc. are provided and are trivially
2348 implemented using `face-property-instance'.
2349
2350 Inheritance of face properties can now be specified. Each individual
2351 face property can inherit differently from other properties, or not
2352 inherit at all.
2353
2354 You can set user-defined properties on faces using
2355 `set-face-property'.
2356
2357 You can create "temporary" faces, which are faces that disappear
2358 when they are no longer in use. This is as opposed to normal
2359 faces, which stay around forever.
2360
2361 The function `make-face' takes a new optional argument specifying
2362 whether a face should be permanent or temporary, and returns the
2363 actual face object rather than the face symbol, as in previous
2364 versions of XEmacs.
2365
2366 The function `face-list' takes a new optional argument specifying
2367 whether permanent, temporary, or both kinds of faces should be
2368 returned.
2369
2370 Faces have new TTY-specific properties: `highlight', `reverse',
2371 `alternate', `blinking', and `dim'.
2372
2373 Redisplay is smarter about dealing with face changes: changes to a
2374 particular face no longer cause all frames to be cleared and
2375 redisplayed.
2376
2377 The Edit-Faces package is provided for interactively changing faces.
2378 A menu item on the options menu is provided for this.
2379
2380 New functions are provided for retrieving the ascent, descent, height,
2381 and width of a character in a particular face.
2382
2383
2384
2385 *** Fonts, Colors
2386 -----------------
2387
2388 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The old "font" and "pixel" objects are gone.
2389 In place are new objects "font specifier", "font instance", "color
2390 specifier", and "color instance". Functions `font-name', `pixel-name'
2391 (an obsolete alias for `color-name'), etc. are now convenience
2392 functions for working with font and color specifiers. Old code that
2393 is not too sophisticated about working with font and pixel objects may
2394 still work, though. (For example, the idiom `(font-name (face-font
2395 'default))' still works.)
2396
2397 You can now extract the RGB components of a color-instance object
2398 (similar to the old pixel object) with the function
2399 `color-instance-rgb-components'. There is also a convenience function
2400 `color-rgb-components' for working with color specifiers.
2401
2402 If there are no more colors available in the colormap, the nearest
2403 existing color will be used when allocating a new color.
2404
2405
2406
2407 *** Frames
2408 ----------
2409
2410 What used to be called "screens" are now called "frames", for clarity
2411 and consistency with GNU Emacs. Aliases are provided for all the old
2412 screen functions and variables, to avoid introducing a huge E-Lisp
2413 incompatibility.
2414
2415 The frame code has been merged with GNU Emacs 19.28, providing
2416 improved functionality for many functions.
2417
2418
2419
2420 *** Glyphs, Images, and Pixmaps
2421 -------------------------------
2422
2423 Glyphs (used in various places, i.e. as begin-glyphs and end-glyphs
2424 attached to extents and appearing in a buffer or in marginal
2425 annotations; as the truncator and continuor glyphs marking line wrap
2426 or truncation; as an overlay at the beginning of a line; as the
2427 displayable element in a toolbar button; etc.) can now be
2428 buffer-local, window-local, frame-local, and device-local, and can be
2429 further restricted to a particular device type or class. The way in
2430 which faces can be controlled is now based on the general and powerful
2431 specifier mechanism; see above.
2432
2433 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The glyph and pixmap API has been completely
2434 overhauled. A new Lisp object "glyph" is provided and should be used
2435 where the old "pixmap" object would have been used. The pixmap object
2436 exists no longer. There are also new Lisp objects "image specifier"
2437 and "image instance" (an image-instance is the closest equivalent to
2438 what a pixmap object was). More work on glyphs and images is slated
2439 for 19.13. The glyph and image docs in the Lisp Reference Manual are
2440 incomplete and will be finished in 19.13.
2441
2442 The new function `set-glyph-property' allows setting of all the
2443 glyph properties (`baseline', `contrib-p', etc.). Convenience
2444 functions for particular properties are also provided, just like
2445 for faces.
2446
2447 You can set user-defined properties on glyphs using the new function
2448 `set-glyph-property'.
2449
2450 When displaying pixmaps, existing, closest-matching colors will be
2451 used if the colormap is full.
2452
2453 If the compface library is compiled into XEmacs, there is built-in
2454 support for displaying X-Face bitmaps. (These are typically small
2455 pictures of people's faces, included in a mail message through the
2456 X-Face: header.) VM and highlight-headers will automatically use the
2457 built-in X-Face support if it is available.
2458
2459 Annotations in the right margin (as well as the left margin) are now
2460 implemented. The left and right margin width functions have been
2461 superseded by the specifier variables `left-margin-width' and
2462 `right-margin-width', allowing much more flexible control through the
2463 specifier mechanism.
2464
2465 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The variable `use-left-overflow',
2466 for controlling annotations in the left margin, is now a specifier
2467 variable instead of a buffer-local variable. (There is also a new
2468 variable `use-right-overflow', that is complementary.)
2469
2470
2471
2472 *** Hashing
2473 -----------
2474
2475 Two new types of weak hashtables can be created: key-weak and
2476 value-weak. In a key-weak hashtable, an entry remains around
2477 if its key is referenced elsewhere, regardless of whether this
2478 is also the case for the value. Value-weak hashtables are
2479 complementary. (This is as opposed to the traditional weak
2480 hashtables, where an entry remains around only if both the
2481 key and value are referenced elsewhere.) New functions
2482 `make-key-weak-hashtable' and `make-value-weak-hashtable'
2483 are provided for creating these hashtables.
2484
2485 The new function `md5' is provided for performing an MD5
2486 hash of an object. MD5 is a secure message digest algorithm
2487 developed by RSA, inc.
2488
2489
2490
2491 *** Keymaps
2492 -----------
2493
2494 The FSF GNU Emacs concept of `function-key-map' is now partially
2495 implemented. This allows conversion of function-key escape sequences
2496 such as `ESC [ 1 1 ~' into an equivalent human-readable keysym such as
2497 `F1'. This work will be completed in 19.14. The function-key map is
2498 device-local and controllable through the functions
2499 `device-function-key-map' and `set-device-function-key-map'.
2500
2501 `where-is-internal' now correctly searches minor-mode keymaps,
2502 extent-local keymaps, etc. As a side effect of this, menu items will
2503 now correctly show the keyboard equivalent for commands that are
2504 available through a minor-mode keymap, extent-local keymap, etc.
2505
2506 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The modifier key "Symbol" has
2507 been renamed to "Alt", for compatibility with the rest of the world.
2508 Keep in mind that on many keyboards, the key labelled "Alt" actually
2509 generates the "Meta" modifier. (On Sun keyboards, however, the key
2510 labelled "Alt" does indeed generate the "Alt" modifier, and the key
2511 labelled with a diamond generates the "Meta" modifier.)
2512
2513
2514
2515 *** Mouse, Active Region
2516 ------------------------
2517
2518 The mouse internals in mouse.el have been rewritten. Hooks have been
2519 provided for easier customization of mouse behavior. For example, you
2520 can now easily specify an action to be invoked on single-click
2521 (i.e. down-up without appreciable motion), double-click, drag-up, etc.
2522
2523 Some code from FSF GNU Emacs has been ported over, generalizing some of
2524 the X-specific mouse stuff.
2525
2526 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The function `set-mouse-position' accepts
2527 a window instead of a frame.
2528
2529 New function `mouse-position' that obsoletes and is more powerful than
2530 `read-mouse-position'.
2531
2532 New functions `mouse-pixel-positon' and `set-mouse-pixel-position' for
2533 working with pixels instead of characters.
2534
2535 The active (Zmacs) region is now highlighted using the `zmacs-region-face'
2536 instead of the `primary-selection-face'; this generalizes what used
2537 to be X-specific.
2538
2539 New functions `region-active-p', `region-exists-p', and `activate-region'
2540 provide a uniform API for dealing with the region irrespective of
2541 whether the variable `zmacs-regions' is set.
2542
2543 XEmacs is now a better X citizen with respect to the primary selection:
2544 it does not stomp on the primary selection quite so much. This makes
2545 things more manageable if you set `zmacs-regions' to nil.
2546
2547
2548
2549 *** Processes
2550 -------------
2551
2552 Various process race conditions and bugs have been fixed. Problems
2553 with process termination not getting noticed until much later (if at
2554 all) should be gone now, as well as problems with zombie processes
2555 under some systems.
2556
2557 SOCKS support is now included. SOCKS is a package that allows hosts
2558 behind a firewall to gain full access to the Internet without
2559 requiring direct IP reachability.
2560
2561
2562
2563 *** Windows
2564 -----------
2565
2566 Windows 95 is still not out yet.
2567
2568 ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The functions `locate-window-from-coordinates'
2569 and `window-edges' have been eliminated. It no longer makes sense to
2570 work with windows in terms of character positions, because windows can
2571 (and often do) have many differently-sized fonts in them, because the
2572 3-D modeline is not exactly one line high, etc.
2573
2574 The new functions `window-pixel-edges', `window-highest-p',
2575 `window-lowest-p', `frame-highest-window', and `frame-lowest-window'
2576 are provided as substitutes for the above-mentioned, deleted
2577 functions.
2578
2579 The function `window-end' now takes an optional GUARANTEE argument
2580 that will ensure that the value is actually correct as of the next
2581 redisplay.
2582
2583 The window code has been merged with GNU Emacs 19.28, providing
2584 improved functionality for many functions.
2585
2586
2587
2588 *** System-Specific Information
2589 -------------------------------
2590
2591 Georg Nikodym's dynodump package is provided, for proper unexec()ing
2592 on Solaris systems. Executables built on Solaris 2.3 can now run on
2593 Solaris 2.4 without crashing; similarly with executables built on one
2594 type of Sun machine and run on another.
2595
2596 AIX 4.x is supported.
2597
2598 The NeXTstep operating system is supported in TTY mode (this is still
2599 in beta). There are plans to port XEmacs to the NeXTstep window
2600 system, but it may be awhile before this is complete.
2601
2602 Problems with the `round' function causing arithmetic errors on HPUX 9
2603 have been fixed.
2604
2605 You can now build XEmacs as an ELF executable on Linux systems that
2606 support ELF.
2607
2608 Various other new system configurations are supported.
2609
2610
2611
2612 *** Packages
2613 ------------
2614
2615 Most packages have been updated to the latest available versions.
2616
2617
2618 Some of the new Emacs Lisp packages ---
2619
2620 Hyperbole: the everyday information manager. Provides a Rolodex,
2621 allows links to be embedded in text, etc.
2622
2623 OOBR: a sophisticated class browser for object-oriented languages.
2624
2625 viper: a better VI emulator that allows Emacs and VI features
2626 to coexist happily.
2627
2628 hm--html-menus: a sophisticated package for editing HTML code,
2629 from Heiko Muenkel.
2630
2631 ksh-mode.el: for editing shell scripts.
2632
2633 lazy-lock.el: a lazy, on-the-fly fontifier.
2634
2635 paren.el: an improved matching paren highlighter
2636
2637
2638
2639 Major changes to existing packages --
2640
2641 VM: has a toolbar, many other nice features.
2642
2643 w3: has a toolbar, many other nice features.
2644
2645 ediff: provides three-way merging, has a better user interface.
2646
2647 info: has a toolbar.
2648
2649 highlight-headers.el: now highlights URL's and makes them active so
2650 that when clicked either Netscape 1.1 is called
2651 or Emacs W3 is run.
2652
2653
2654 ** Major Differences Between 19.10 and 19.11
2655 ============================================
2656
2657 The name has changed from "Lucid Emacs" to "XEmacs". Along with this is a
2658 new canonical ftp site: cs.uiuc.edu:/pub/xemacs.
2659
2660 XEmacs now has its very own World Wide Web page! It contains a
2661 complete list of the FTP distribution sites, the most recent FAQ,
2662 pointers to Emacs Lisp packages not included with the distribution, and
2663 other useful stuff. Check it out at http://xemacs.cs.uiuc.edu/.
2664
2665 A preliminary New Users Guide.
2666
2667 cc-mode.el now provides the default C, C++ and Objective-C modes.
2668
2669 The primary goal of this release is stability. Very few new features have
2670 been introduced but lots of bugs have been fixed. Many of the Emacs Lisp
2671 packages have been updated.
2672
2673 Some of the new Emacs Lisp packages ---
2674
2675 tcl-mode.el: major mode for editing TCL code
2676
2677 fast-lock.el: saves and restores font-lock highlighting, greatly
2678 reducing the time necessary for loading a font-lock'ed
2679 file
2680
2681 ps-print.el: prints buffers to Postscript printers preserving the
2682 buffer's bold and italic text attributes
2683
2684 toolbar.el: provides a "fake" toolbar for use with XEmacs (an
2685 integrated one will be included with 19.12)
2686
2687
2688 ** Major Differences Between 19.9 and 19.10
2689 ===========================================
2690
2691 The GNU `configure' system is now used to build lemacs.
2692
2693 The Emacs Manual and Emacs Lisp Reference Manual now document version 19.10.
2694 If you notice any errors, please let us know.
2695
2696 When pixmaps are displayed in a buffer, they contribute to the line height -
2697 that is, if the glyph is taller than the rest of the text on the line, the
2698 line will be as tall as necessary to display the glyph.
2699
2700 In addition to using arbitrary sound files as emacs beeps, one can control
2701 the pitch and duration of the standard X beep, on X servers which allow that
2702 (Note: most don't.)
2703
2704 There is support for playing sounds on systems with NetAudio servers.
2705
2706 Minor modes may have mode-specific key bindings; keymaps may have an arbitrary
2707 number of parent maps.
2708
2709 Menus can have toggle and radio buttons in them.
2710
2711 There is a font selection menu.
2712
2713 Some default key bindings have changed to match FSF19; the new bindings are
2714
2715 Screen-related commands:
2716 C-x 5 2 make-screen
2717 C-x 5 0 delete-screen
2718 C-x 5 b switch-to-buffer-other-screen
2719 C-x 5 f find-file-other-screen
2720 C-x 5 C-f find-file-other-screen
2721 C-x 5 m mail-other-screen
2722 C-x 5 o other-screen
2723 C-x 5 r find-file-read-only-other-screen
2724 Abbrev-related commands:
2725 C-x a l add-mode-abbrev
2726 C-x a C-a add-mode-abbrev
2727 C-x a g add-global-abbrev
2728 C-x a + add-mode-abbrev
2729 C-x a i g inverse-add-global-abbrev
2730 C-x a i l inverse-add-mode-abbrev
2731 C-x a - inverse-add-global-abbrev
2732 C-x a e expand-abbrev
2733 C-x a ' expand-abbrev
2734 Register-related commands:
2735 C-x r C-SPC point-to-register
2736 C-x r SPC point-to-register
2737 C-x r j jump-to-register
2738 C-x r s copy-to-register
2739 C-x r x copy-to-register
2740 C-x r i insert-register
2741 C-x r g insert-register
2742 C-x r r copy-rectangle-to-register
2743 C-x r c clear-rectangle
2744 C-x r k kill-rectangle
2745 C-x r y yank-rectangle
2746 C-x r o open-rectangle
2747 C-x r t string-rectangle
2748 C-x r w window-configuration-to-register
2749 Narrowing-related commands:
2750 C-x n n narrow-to-region
2751 C-x n w widen
2752 Other changes:
2753 C-x 3 split-window-horizontally (was undefined)
2754 C-x - shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer
2755 C-x + balance-windows
2756
2757 The variable allow-deletion-of-last-visible-screen has been removed, since
2758 it was widely hated. You can now always delete the last visible screen if
2759 there are other iconified screens in existence.
2760
2761 ToolTalk support is provided.
2762
2763 An Emacs screen can be placed within an "external client widget" managed
2764 by another application. This allows an application to use an Emacs screen
2765 as its text pane rather than the standard Text widget that is provided
2766 with Motif or Athena.
2767
2768 Additional compatibility with Epoch is provided (though this is not yet
2769 complete.)
2770
2771
2772 ** Major Differences Between 19.8 and 19.9
2773 ==========================================
2774
2775 Scrollbars! If you have Motif, these are real Motif scrollbars; otherwise,
2776 Athena scrollbars are used. They obey all the usual resources of their
2777 respective toolkits.
2778
2779 There is now an implementation of dialog boxes based based on the Athena
2780 widgets, as well as the existing Motif implementation.
2781
2782 This release works with Motif 1.2 as well as 1.1. If you link with Motif,
2783 you do not also need to link with Athena.
2784
2785 If you compile lwlib with both USE_MOTIF and USE_LUCID defined (which is the
2786 recommended configuration) then the Lucid menus will draw text using the Motif
2787 string-drawing library, instead of the Xlib one. The reason for this is that
2788 one can take advantage of the XmString facilities for including non-Latin1
2789 characters in resource specifications. However, this is a user-visible change
2790 in that, in this configuration, the menubar will use the "*fontList" resource
2791 in preference to the "*font" resource, if it is set.
2792
2793 It's possible to make extents which are copied/pasted by kill and undo.
2794 There is an implementation of FSF19-style text properties based on this.
2795
2796 There is a new variable, minibuffer-max-depth, which is intended to circumvent
2797 a common source of confusion among new Emacs users. Since, under a window
2798 system, it's easy to jump out of the minibuffer (by doing M-x, then getting
2799 distracted, and clicking elsewhere) many, many novice users have had the
2800 problem of having multiple minibuffers build up, even to the point of
2801 exhausting the lisp stack. So the default behavior is to disallow the
2802 minibuffer to ever be reinvoked while active; if you attempt to do so, you
2803 will be prompted about it.
2804
2805 There is a new variable, teach-extended-commands-p, which if set, will cause
2806 `M-x' to remind you of any key bindings of the command you just invoked the
2807 "long way."
2808
2809 There are menus in Dired, Tar, Comint, Compile, and Grep modes.
2810
2811 There is a menu of window management commands on the right mouse button over
2812 the modelines.
2813
2814 Popup menus now have titles at the top; this is controlled by the new
2815 variable `popup-menu-titles'.
2816
2817 The `Find' key on Sun keyboards will search for the next (or previous)
2818 occurrence of the selected text, as in OpenWindows programs.
2819
2820 The `timer' package has been renamed to `itimer' to avoid a conflict with
2821 a different package called `timer'.
2822
2823 VM 5.40 is included.
2824
2825 W3, the emacs interface to the World Wide Web, is included.
2826
2827 Felix Lee's GNUS speedups have been installed, including his new version of
2828 nntp.el which makes GNUS efficiently utilize the NNTP XOVER command if
2829 available (which is much faster.)
2830
2831 GNUS should also be much friendlier to new users: it starts up much faster,
2832 and doesn't (necessarily) subscribe you to every single newsgroup.
2833
2834 The byte-compiler issues a new class of warnings: variables which are
2835 bound but not used. This is merely an advisory, and does not mean the
2836 code is incorrect; you can disable these warnings in the usual way with
2837 the `byte-compiler-options' macro.
2838
2839 the `start-open' and `end-open' extent properties, for specifying whether
2840 characters inserted exactly at a boundary of an extent should go into the
2841 extent or out of it, now work correctly.
2842
2843 The `extent-data' slot has been generalized/replaced with a property list,
2844 so it's easier to attach arbitrary data to extent objects.
2845
2846 The `event-modifiers' and `event-modifier-bits' functions work on motion
2847 events as well as other mouse and keyboard events.
2848
2849 Forms-mode uses fonts and read-only regions.
2850
2851 The behavior of the -geometry command line option should be correct now.
2852
2853 The `iconic' screen parameter works when passed to x-create-screen.
2854
2855 The user's manual now documents Lucid Emacs 19.9.
2856
2857 The relocating buffer allocator is turned on by default; this means that when
2858 buffers are killed, their storage will be returned to the operating system,
2859 and the size of the emacs process will shrink.
2860
2861 CAVEAT: code which contains calls to certain `face' accessor functions will
2862 need to be recompiled by version 19.9 before it will work. The functions
2863 whose callers must be recompiled are: face-font, face-foreground,
2864 face-background, face-background-pixmap, and face-underline-p. The symptom
2865 of this problem is the error "Wrong type argument, arrayp, #<face ... >".
2866 The .elc files generated by version 19.9 will work in 19.6 and 19.8, but
2867 older .elc files which contain calls to these functions will not work in 19.9.
2868
2869 Work In Progress:
2870
2871 - We have been in the process of internationalizing Lucid Emacs. This code is
2872 ***not*** ready for general use yet. However, the code is included (and
2873 turned off by default) in this release.
2874
2875 - If you define I18N2 at compile-time, then sorting/collation will be done
2876 according to the locale returned by setlocale().
2877
2878 - If you define I18N3 at compile-time, then all messages printed by lemacs
2879 will be filtered through the gettext() library routine, to enable the use
2880 of locale-specific translation catalogues. The current implementation of
2881 this is quite dependent on Solaris 2, and has a very large impact on
2882 existing code, therefore we are going to be making major changes soon.
2883 (You'll notice calls to `gettext' and `GETTEXT' scattered around much of
2884 the lisp and C code; ignore it, this will be going away.)
2885
2886 - If you define I18N4 at compile-time, then lemacs will internally use a
2887 wide representation of characters, enabling the use of large character
2888 sets such as Kanji. This code is very OS dependent: it requires X11R5,
2889 and several OS-supplied library routines for reading and writing wide
2890 characters (getwc(), putwc(), and a few others.) Performance is also a
2891 problem. This code is also scheduled for a major overhaul, with the
2892 intent of improving performance and portability.
2893
2894 Our eventual goal is to merge with MULE, or at least provide the same base
2895 level of functionality. If you would like to help out with this, let us
2896 know.
2897
2898 - Other work-in-progress includes Motif drag-and-drop support, ToolTalk
2899 support, and support for embedding an Emacs widget inside another
2900 application (where it can function as that other application's text-entry
2901 area). This code has not been extensively tested, and may (or may not)
2902 have portability problems, but it's there for the adventurous. Comments,
2903 suggestions, bug reports, and especially fixes are welcome. But have no
2904 expectations that this experimental code will work at all.
2905
2906
2907 ** Major Differences Between 19.6 and 19.8
2908 ==========================================
2909
2910 There were almost no differences between versions 19.6 and 19.7; version 19.7
2911 was a bug-fix release that was distributed with Energize 2.1.
2912
2913 Lucid Emacs 19.8 represents the first stage of the Lucid Emacs/Epoch merger.
2914 The redisplay engine now in lemacs is an improved descendant of the Epoch
2915 redisplay. As a result, many bugs have been eliminated, and several disabled
2916 features have been re-enabled. Notably:
2917
2918 Selective display (and outline-mode) work.
2919
2920 Horizontally split windows work.
2921
2922 The height of a line is the height of the tallest font displayed on that line;
2923 it is possible for a screen to display lines of differing heights. (Previously,
2924 the height of all lines was the height of the tallest font loaded.)
2925
2926 There is lisp code to scale fonts up and down, for example, to load the next-
2927 taller version of a font.
2928
2929 There is a new internal representation for lisp objects, giving emacs-lisp 28
2930 bit integers and a 28 bit address space, up from the previous maximum of 26.
2931 We expect eventually to increase this to 30 bit integers and a 32 bit address
2932 space, eliminating the need for DATA_SEG_BITS on some architectures. (On 64
2933 bit machines, add 32 to all of these numbers.)
2934
2935 GC performance is improved.
2936
2937 Various X objects (fonts, colors, cursors, pixmaps) are accessible as first-
2938 class lisp objects, with finalization.
2939
2940 An alternate interface to embedding images in the text is provided, called
2941 "annotations." You may create an "annotation margin" which is whitespace at
2942 the left side of the screen that contains only annotations, not buffer text.
2943
2944 When using XPM files, one can specify the values of logical color names to be
2945 used when loading the files.
2946
2947 It is possible to resize windows by dragging their modelines up and down. More
2948 generally, it is possible to add bindings for mouse gestures on the modelines.
2949
2950 There is support for playing sound files on HP machines.
2951
2952 ILISP version 5.5 is included.
2953
2954 The Common Lisp #' read syntax is supported (#' is to "function" as ' is to
2955 "quote".)
2956
2957 The `active-p' slot of menu items is now evaluated, so one can put arbitrary
2958 lisp code in a menu to decide whether that item should be selectable, rather
2959 than doing this with an `activate-menubar-hook'.
2960
2961 The X resource hierarchy has changed slightly, to be more consistent. It used
2962 to be
2963 argv[0] SCREEN-NAME pane screen
2964 ApplicationShell EmacsShell Paned EmacsFrame
2965
2966 now it is
2967
2968 argv[0] shell pane SCREEN-NAME
2969 ApplicationShell EmacsShell Paned EmacsFrame
2970
2971 The Lucid Emacs sources have been largely merged with FSF version 19; this
2972 means that the lisp library contains the most recent releases of various
2973 packages, and many new features of FSF 19 have been incorporated.
2974
2975 Because of this, the lemacs sources should also be substantially more portable.
2976
2977
2978 ** Major Differences Between 19.4 and 19.6
2979 ==========================================
2980
2981 There were almost no differences between versions 19.4 and 19.5; we fixed
2982 a few minor bugs and repacked 19.4 as 19.5 for a CD-ROM that we gave away
2983 as a trade show promotion.
2984
2985 The primary goal of the 19.6 release is stability, rather than improved
2986 functionality, so there aren't many user-visible changes. The most notable
2987 changes are:
2988
2989 - The -geometry command-line option now correctly overrides geometry
2990 specifications in the resource database.
2991 - The `width' and `height' screen-parameters work.
2992 - Font-lock-mode considers the comment start and end characters to be
2993 a part of the comment.
2994 - The lhilit package has been removed. Use font-lock-mode instead.
2995 - vm-isearch has been fixed to work with isearch-mode.
2996 - new versions of ispell and calendar.
2997 - sccs.el has menus.
2998
2999 Lots of bugs were fixed, including the problem that lemacs occasionally
3000 grabbed the keyboard focus.
3001
3002 Also, as of Lucid Emacs 19.6 and Energize 2.0 (shipping now) it is possible
3003 to compile the public release of Lucid Emacs with support for Energize; so
3004 now Energize users will be able to build their own Energize-aware versions
3005 of lemacs, and will be able to use newer versions of lemacs as they are
3006 released to the net. (Of course, this is not behavior covered by your
3007 Energize support contract; you do it at your own risk.)
3008
3009 I have not incorporated all portability patches that I have been sent since
3010 19.4; I will try to get to them soon. However, if you need to make any
3011 changes to lemacs to get it to compile on your system, it would be quite
3012 helpful if you would send me context diffs (diff -c) against version 19.6.
3013
3014
3015 ** Major Differences Between 19.3 and 19.4
3016 ==========================================
3017
3018 Prototypes have been added for all functions. Emacs compiles in the strict
3019 ANSI modes of lcc and gcc, so portability should be vastly improved.
3020
3021 Many many many many core leaks have been plugged, especially in screen
3022 creation and deletion.
3023
3024 The float support reworked to be more portable and ANSI conformant. This
3025 resulted in these new configuration parameters: HAVE_INVERSE_HYPERBOLIC,
3026 HAVE_CBRT, HAVE_RINT, FLOAT_CHECK_ERRNO, FLOAT_CATCH_SIGILL,
3027 FLOAT_CHECK_DOMAIN. Let us know if you had to change the defaults on your
3028 architecture.
3029
3030 The SunOS unexec has been rewritten, and now works with either static or
3031 dynamic libraries, depending on whether -Bstatic or -Bdynamic were specified
3032 at link-time.
3033
3034 Small (character-sized) bitmaps can be mixed in with buffer text via the new
3035 functions set-extent-begin-glyph and set-extent-end-glyph. (This is actually
3036 a piece of functionality that Energize has been using for a while, but we've
3037 just gotten around to making it possible to use it without Energize. See how
3038 nice we are? Go buy our product.)
3039
3040 If compiled with Motif support, one can pop up dialog boxes from emacs lisp.
3041 We encourage someone to contribute Athena an version of this code; it
3042 shouldn't be much work.
3043
3044 If dialog boxes are available, then y-or-n-p and yes-or-no-p use dialog boxes
3045 instead of the minibuffer if invoked as a result of a command that was
3046 executed from a menu instead of from the keyboard.
3047
3048 Multiple screen support works better; check out doc of get-screen-for-buffer.
3049
3050 The default binding of backspace is the same as delete. (C-h is still help.)
3051
3052 A middle click while the minibuffer is active does completion if you click on
3053 a highlighted completion, otherwise it executes the global binding of button2.
3054
3055 New versions of Barry Warsaw's c++-mode and syntax.c. Font-lock-mode works
3056 with C++ mode now.
3057
3058 The semantics of activate-menubar-hook has changed; the functions are called
3059 with no arguments now.
3060
3061 `truename' no longer hacks the automounter; use directory-abbrev-alist instead.
3062
3063 Most minibuffer handling has been reimplemented in emacs-lisp.
3064
3065 There is now a builtin minibuffer history mechanism which replaces gmhist.
3066
3067
3068 ** Major Differences Between 19.2 and 19.3
3069 ==========================================
3070
3071 The ISO characters have correct case and syntax tables now, so the word-motion
3072 and case-converting commands work sensibly on them.
3073
3074 If you set ctl-arrow to an integer, you can control exactly which characters
3075 are printable. (There will be a less crufty way to do this eventually.)
3076
3077 Menubars can now be buffer local; the function set-screen-menubar no longer
3078 exists. Look at GNUS and VM for examples of how to do this, or read
3079 menubar.el.
3080
3081 When emacs is reading from the minibuffer with completions, any completions
3082 which are visible on the screen will highlight when the mouse moves over them;
3083 clicking middle on a completion is the same as typing it at the minibuffer.
3084 Some implications of this: The *Completions* buffer is always mousable. If
3085 you're using the completion feature of find-tag, your source code will be
3086 mousable when you type M-. Dired buffers will be mousable as soon as you
3087 type ^X^F. And so on.
3088
3089 The old isearch code has been replaced with a descendant of Dan LaLiberte's
3090 excellent isearch-mode; it is more customizable, and generally less bogus.
3091 You can search for "composed" characters. There are new commands, too; see
3092 the doc for ^S, or the NEWS file.
3093
3094 A patched GNUS 3.14 is included.
3095
3096 The user's manual now documents Lucid Emacs 19.3.
3097
3098 A few more modes have mouse and menu support.
3099
3100 The startup code should be a little more robust, and give you more reasonable
3101 error messages when things aren't installed quite right (instead of the
3102 ubiquitous "cannot open DISPLAY"...)
3103
3104 Subdirectories of the lisp directory whose names begin with a hyphen or dot
3105 are not automatically added to the load-path, so you can use this to avoid
3106 accidentally inflicting experimental software on your users.
3107
3108 I've tried to incorporate all of the portability patches that were sent to
3109 me; I tried to solve some of the problems in different ways than the
3110 patches did, so let me know if I missed something.
3111
3112 Some systems will need to define NEED_STRDUP, NEED_REALPATH, HAVE_DREM, or
3113 HAVE_REMAINDER in config.h. Really this should be done in the appropriate
3114 s- or m- files, but I don't know which systems need these and which don't.
3115 If yours does, let me know which file it should be in.
3116
3117 Check out these new packages:
3118
3119 blink-paren.el: causes the matching parenthesis to flash on and off whenever
3120 the cursor is sitting on a paren-syntax character.
3121
3122 pending-del.el: Certain commands implicitly delete the highlighted region:
3123 Typing a character when there is a highlighted region replaces
3124 that region with the typed character.
3125
3126 font-lock.el: A code-highlighting package, driven off of syntax tables, so
3127 that it understands block comments, strings, etc. The
3128 insertion hook is used to fontify text as you type it in.
3129
3130 shell-font.el: Displays your shell-buffer prompt in boldface.