xemacs-beta: etc/NEWS comparison

comparison etc/NEWS @ 412:697ef44129c6 r21-2-14

Import from CVS: tag r21-2-14

author	cvs
date	Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:20:41 +0200
parents	de805c49cfc1
children	da8ed4261e83

comparison

equal deleted inserted replaced

-:12e008d41344
+:697ef44129c6
 * Changes in XEmacs 21.2
 ========================
-** The delete key now deletes forward by default.
+** `delete-key-deletes-forward' now defaults to t.
-This is regulated by the variable `delete-key-deletes-forward', which
+`delete-key-deletes-forward' is the variable that regulates the
-now defaults to t.  `delete-key-deletes-forward' takes effect only on
+behaviour of the delete key on the systems that offer both a backspace
-the systems that offer both a backspace and a delete key.  If set to
+and a delete key.  If set to nil, the key labeled "Delete" will delete
-nil, the key labeled "Delete" will always delete backward.  If set to
+backward.  If set to non-nil, the "Delete" key will delete forward,
-non-nil, the "Delete" key will delete forward, except on keyboards
+except on keyboards where a "Backspace" key is not provided.
-where a "Backspace" key is not provided (e.g. old DEC keyboards.)
+Unless our implementation has bugs, the only reason why you would want
-Unless our implementation has bugs, the only reason why you would want
 to set `delete-key-deletes-forward' to nil is if you want to use the
 Delete key to delete backwards, despite the presence (according to
 Xlib) of a BackSpace key on the keyboard.
-** Shifted motion keys now select text by default.  You can turn this
-off by setting `shifted-motion-keys-select-region' to nil.
-** You can now set the variable `kill-whole-line' to `always', which
-makes `kill-line' (C-k) delete the entire line always, not just when
-the cursor is at the beginning of the line.  This behavior, as well as
-the existing kill-whole-line behavior, now only take effect when
-kill-line is called interactively, although this is a departure from a
-previous behavior in the case of setting this variable kill-whole-line
-to t.  It is almost certainly what has always been intended, and most
-likely the old way of doing things introduced bugs.
-The new function `historical-kill-line' ignores the `kill-whole-line'
-setting and always gives the historical behavior of only killing to
-the end of the line.  This function is bound to Sh-C-k, so that the
-kill to end of line behavior is available, even when `kill-whole-line'
-has been customized.
-** XEmacs menus now have accelerators by default.  If a menu item does
-not have an accelerator specified, one is created dynamically, using
-numbers 1-9 and letters.
 ** Interactive searching and matching case improvements.
 Case sensitiveness in searching operations is normally controlled by
 the variable `case-fold-search' (if non-nil, case is ignored while
 searching).  This mechanism has now been slightly improved for
 interactive searches: if the search string (or regexp) contains
 uppercase characters, the searching is forced to be case-sensitive,
 `case-fold-search'.
 The new behavior affects all functions performing interactive
 searches, like `zap-to-char', `list-matching-lines', `tags-search'
 etc.  The incremental search facility has always behaved that way.
-** Incremental search will now highlight all visible matches, making
-it easier to anticipate where consecutive C-s or C-r will place the
-point.  If you want to disable the feature, set
-`isearch-highlight-all-matches' to nil.
-** You can now use the buffer tabs to switch between buffers.  The
-tabs are located between the toolbar and the uppermost window, in a
-location called "gutter".  If you dislike the buffer tabs, you can
-disable them by customizing `gutter-buffers-tab-visible-p', or by
-placing this in your .emacs:
-(set-gutter-element-visible-p default-gutter-visible-p 'buffers-tab nil)
-You can change the location of the gutter with
-`set-default-gutter-position', however currently only MS-Windows
-supports tab widgets with orientations other than vertical.
-** Kill and yank now interact with the clipboard by default under
-Windows.  This was done by changing the default value of
-`interprogram-cut-function' and `interprogram-paste-function'.  You
-can get the old behavior by setting these to nil, and there is an
-option on the options menu to do this.
-** When you press RET at a minibuffer prompt that provides a default
-value, the value is stored in history instead of an empty line.  Also,
-you can now edit the default value by pressing the down arrow,
-accessing the logical "future" value.  Not all minibuffer prompts have
-yet been converted to support this feature.
-** The rectangle functions have been almost completely rewritten in
-order to avoid inserting undesirable spaces, notably at the end of
-lines.  Two typical examples of the old behavior were
-`string-rectangle', which filled all lines up to the right side of the
-rectangle, and `clear-rectangle', which filled even empty lines up to
-the left side.  All functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting
-unwanted spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the
-old way.
-Also, the behavior of `string-rectangle' is now compliant with
-`pending-delete-mode': if this mode is active, then the string
-replaces the region rectangle.  Otherwise, the command does not delete
-or overwrite any existing text.  For those who want that feature but do
-not use pending-delete-mode, a new function, `replace-rectangle', is
-available.
-As a side effect, the FORCE argument to `move-to-column' now
-understands the special value `coerce', which means that the line
-should not be filled if it is too short to reach the desired column.
-** Customize now supports adding comments about your face and variable
-settings using a new menu entry.  Comments for variables can also be
-assigned by calling `customize-set-(value|variable)' with a prefix
-argument.
-** XEmacs now locates the early package hierarchies at
-~/.xemacs/mule-packages/ and ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages/.  Previously,
-the early packages were located in ~/.xemacs/.
 ** You can now create "indirect buffers", like in GNU Emacs.  An
 indirect buffer shares its text with another buffer ("base buffer"),
 but has its own major mode, local variables, extents, and narrowing.
 An indirect buffer has a name of its own, distinct from those of the
 ** User names following the tilde character can now be completed at
 file name prompts; e.g. `C-x C-f ~hni<TAB>' will complete to
 `~hniksic/'.  To make this operation faster, a cache of user names is
 maintained internally.
-The new primitives available for this purpose are functions named
-`user-name-completion' and `user-name-all-completions'.
-** XEmacs can now play sound using Enlightenment Sound Daemon (ESD).
-It will try NAS first, then ESD, then playing native sound directly.
-** X-Face support is now available under MS-Windows.
-If an X-Face libary built under MS-Windows is available then XEmacs
-will use this at build time.
-** The font-menu is now available under MS-Windows.
-** MS-Windows support for selection is now much more robust.
-Generally selection should now do what you would expect under
-MS-Windows: the middle mouse button will paste your current selection
-or the clipboard; conversions from different types of selection to the
-clipboard can be made; the kill-ring and friends will be updated as
-per X.
-The only thing selection doesn't do is set the clipboard automatically
-as this would break the MS-Windows model.  If you want this behaviour
-then set `selection-sets-clipboard' to t
-** Mail spool locking now works correctly.
-XEmacs has always come with a little auxiliary program, movemail,
-which moves mail out of the system's spool area into user storage.  To
-coordinate between XEmacs, the mail delivery agent, and other mail
-user agents, movemail needs to properly lock the spool file before
-moving it.  Movemail now correctly respects the --mail-locking option
-to configure.  Moreover, movemail's locking behavior can be specified
-at run-time, via a new command-line option -m to movemail, or through
-the environment variable EMACSLOCKMETHOD.
-When installing XEmacs, make sure you configure it according to your
-environment's mail spool locking conventions.  When you're using a
-binary kit, set the `mail-lock-method' variable at startup, or the
-EMACSLOCKMETHOD environment variable.
-** Init file will move to ~/.xemacs/init.el.
-If `~/.xemacs/init.el' exists, XEmacs will prefer it over `~/.emacs'
-as an init file.  The file may be byte-compiled as
-`~/.xemacs/init.elc'.
-Future versions of XEmacs will stop supporting `~/.emacs' as an init
-file.  XEmacs offers automatic migration upon startup.
-** Custom file will move to ~/.xemacs/custom.el.
-Whereas customize settings were formerly stored in the regular init
-file, XEmacs now prefers them to be in a separate file
-`~/.xemacs/custom.el', completely under automatic control.  This
-change goes with the migration of the init file, and XEmacs offers
-automatic migration upon startup.
-** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
-For the time being, like in GNU Emacs 20.4 and on, you can now name
-the XEmacs init file `.emacs.el'.  Formerly the name had to be
-`.emacs'.  If you use the name `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the
-file in the usual way.
-If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file is the one
-that is used.
-** New command-line switches -user-init-file and -user-init-directory.
-These can be used to specify alternate locations for what is normally
-~/.emacs and ~/.xemacs.
-Moreover, -user <user> (which used to only work in unpredictable ways)
-is now equivalent to -user-init-file ~<user>/.xemacs/init.el
--user-init-directory ~<user>/.xemacs.  or -user-init-file
-~<user>/.emacs -user-init-directory ~<user>/.xemacs, whichever init
-file comes first.
-** New variable `mswindows-meta-activates-menu'.
-If you set this variable to nil then pressing and releasing the Alt
-key under MS-Windows will no longer activate the menubar.  The default
-is t.  This is not to be confused with `menu-accelerator-enabled',
-which enables the use of Alt+<Letter> accelerators to invoke the
-menus.
-** Pixel-based scrolling has been implemented.
-By default this will attempt to scroll in increments equal to the
-height of the default face.  Set `window-pixel-scroll-increment' to
-modify this behaviour.
-** Operation progress can be displayed using graphical widgets.
-See `lprogress-display' for details.  This support has been switched
-on by default for font-lock and some web browsing functions.  If you
-do not like this behaviour set `progress-display-use-echo-area'.
-** The PostgreSQL Relational Database Management System is now supported.
-It is now possible to build XEmacs so that the programming interface
-to the PostgreSQL RDBMS (libpq) is available in XEmacs Lisp.
-Supported versions of PostgreSQL are 6.5.3 (earlier versions may work,
-but have not been tested) and 7.0-beta1.
-** Etags changes.
-*** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
-*** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex.  It is now
-possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
-{lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints
-out.  This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each
-line contains a regular expression.  The manual contains details.
-*** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
-declarations when given the --declarations option.
-*** In C++, tags are created for "operator".  The tags have the form
-"operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
-*** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
-types.
-*** In Fortran, procedure is no more tagged.
-*** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
-*** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
-are now tagged.
-*** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables.  my and local
-variables are tagged.
-*** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
-*** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
-for PSWrap.
 * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.2
 ==========================================
-** A new portable dumper is available for beta testing.
-Olivier Galibert has written a portable dumper for XEmacs, based on
-initial work by Kyle Jones.  Normally, XEmacs C sources link into an
-executable called `temacs', which loads the Lisp code and "unexecs"
-into a proper `xemacs' executable.  The unexec() process is hard to
-implement correctly and makes XEmacs very hard to port to new
-operating systems, or even to new releases of old systems.
-A portable dumper is a different approach to dumping: instead of
-dumping full-fledged executable, it only dumps out the initialized
-data structures (both Lisp and C) into an external file.  A normally
-running XEmacs only needs to mmap() that file and relocate a bit to
-get to the initialized data.  In that scheme, there is no difference
-between `temacs' and `xemacs'.
-This is all very experimental, though.  Configure with `--pdump' to
-try testing it.
 ** Much effort has been invested to make XEmacs Lisp faster:
 *** Many basic lisp operations are now faster.
 This is especially the case when running a Mule-enabled XEmacs.
 Many operations do not see any improvement.  Surprisingly, running
 (font-lock-fontify-buffer) does not use the Lisp engine much at all.
 Speeding up your favorite slow operation is an excellent project to
 improve XEmacs.  Don't forget to profile!
-** Native widgets can be displayed in buffers.
-The glyph system has been extended to allow the display of glyphs that
-are implemented as native window-system widgets.  Thus you can embed
-buttons, scrollbars, combo boxes, edit fields and progress gauges in a
-buffer.  As a side effect subwindow support now works once again.
-All of this is still fairly experimental and there is no
-documentation.  The current APIs might change in a future version of
-XEmacs.  Some widgets are only available under MS-Windows.  See the
-file glyphs-test.el in the XEmacs src distribution for examples of
-usage.
-The buffers-tab functionality and progress gauge have been implemented
-using this feature.
-** `user-init-file' and `user-init-directory' are now absolute
-file/directory names.  Previously, both variables used to be relative
-to (concat "~" init-file-user).  This turned out to be too complicated
-for most packages (and some core Lisp files) to use correctly.  Also,
-the `init-file-user' variable has been obsoleted in the process.
-The user-visible options like `-u' have not changed their behaviour.
 ** XEmacs finally has an automated test suite!
 Although this is not yet very sophisticated, it is already responsible
 for several important bug fixes in XEmacs.  To try it out, simply use
 the makefile target `make check' after building XEmacs.
 => (foo ... <circular list>)
 An extra bonus is that checking for circularities is not just
 friendlier, but actually faster than checking for C-g.
-** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
+** The new form `ignore-file-errors', similar to `ignore-errors' may
-`base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
+be used as a short-hand for condition-case when you wish to ignore
-and `base64-decode-string'.
+file-related error.  For example:
-** The functions `read-string', `read-expression', `eval-minibuffer',
+(ignore-file-errors (delete-file "foo"))
-`read-variable', `read-command', `read-function', `read-number',
-`read-shell-command', `read-from-minibuffer', and `completing-read'
+** The arguments to `locate-file' are now much more "lispy".  As
-now take an additional argument which specifies the default value.  If
+before, the usage is:
-this argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used
-in two ways:
-It is returned if the user enters empty input.
-It is available through the history command M-n.
-** LDAP changes.
-*** The LDAP interface now consists of two layers, a low-level layer
-that closely matches the LDAP C API, and a more convenient
-higher-level set of functions.
-*** The low-level functions that used to be named *-internal are now
-named more simply: `ldap-open', `ldap-close', `ldap-search-basic',
-`ldap-add', and `ldap-modify'.  They should be used directly for very
-specific purposes (such as multiple operations on a connection) only.
-*** The higher-level functions provide a more convenient way to access
-LDAP directories hiding the subtleties of handling the connection,
-translating arguments and ensuring compliance with LDAP
-internationalization rules and formats (currently partly implemented
-only.)  This layer provides atomic operations for searches,
-modification, addition and deletion of multiple entries at once:
-`ldap-search-entries', `ldap-add-entries', `ldap-delete-entries', and
-`ldap-modify-entries'.
-*** To maintain compatibility with previous code, the now obsolete
-function `ldap-search' is now merely a wrapper that calls either
-`ldap-search-basic' or `ldap-search-entries'.  Please don't use the
-`ldap-search' function in your new programs -- a direct call to one of
-the two replacements is more efficient and unambiguous.
-** The arguments to `locate-file' are now more Lisp-like.  As before,
-the usage is:
 (locate-file FILENAME PATH-LIST &optional SUFFIXES MODE)
 Except that SUFFIXES are now a list of strings instead of a single,
 colon-separated string.  MODE is now a symbol or a list of symbols
 (symbols `exists', `executable', `writable', and `readable' are
 supported) instead of an integer code.  See the documentation for
-details.  Of course, the old form is still accepted for backward
+details.
-compatibility.
+Of course, the old form is still accepted for backward compatibility.
-Several bugs in locate-file have been fixed, most notably its failure
-to call expand-file-name on elements of PATH-LIST.  Because of that
+** The `keywordp' function now returns non-nil only on symbols
-elements of load-path of the form "~/..." used to not work.
+interned in the global obarray.  For example:
-locate-file is now guaranteed to expand files during its course of
-operation.
+(keywordp (intern ":foo" [0]))
+=> nil
-** `translate-region' has been improved in several ways.  Its TABLE
+(keywordp (intern ":foo"))       ; The same as (keywordp :foo)
-argument used to be a 256-character string.  In addition to this, it
+=> t
-can now also be a vector or a char-table, which makes the function
-useful for Mule, which it wasn't.  If TABLE a vector or a generic
+This behaviour is compatible with other code which treats symbols
-char-table, you can map characters to strings instead of to other
+beginning with colon as keywords only if they are interned in the
-characters.  For instance:
+global obarray.  `keyword' used to wrongly return t in both cases
+above.
-(let ((table (make-char-table 'generic)))
-(put-char-table ?a "the letter a" table)
-(put-char-table ?b "" table)
-(put-char-table ?c ?\n table)
-(translate-region (point-min) (point-max) table))
-** The new form `ignore-file-errors', similar to `ignore-errors' may
-be used as a short-hand for condition-case when you wish to ignore
-file-related error.  For example:
-(ignore-file-errors (delete-file "foo"))
 ** The first argument to `intern-soft' may now also be a symbol, like
 with `unintern'.  If given a symbol, `intern-soft' will look for that
 exact symbol rather than for any string.  This is useful when you want
 to check whether a specific symbol is interned in an obarray, e.g.:
 (intern-soft "foo")
 => foo
 (intern-soft (make-symbol "foo"))
 => nil
-** The `keywordp' function now returns non-nil only on symbols
+** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
-interned in the global obarray.  For example:
+`base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
+and `base64-decode-string'.
-(keywordp (intern ":foo" [0]))
-=> nil
-(keywordp (intern ":foo"))       ; The same as (keywordp :foo)
-=> t
-This behaviour is compatible with other code which treats symbols
-beginning with colon as keywords only if they are interned in the
-global obarray.  `keywordp' used to wrongly return t in both cases
-above.
-** New variables `this-command-properties' and
-`last-command-properties' are now available for communication between
-consecutive commands.  Commands should use these to communicate with
-the pre/post-command hooks, subsequent commands, wrapping commands,
-etc. in preference to looking at and/or setting `this-command'.
-** New functions `add-one-shot-hook' and `add-local-one-shot-hook' make
-it possible to add a "one-shot" hook, which is to say a hook that runs
-only once, and automatically removes itself after the first time it
-has run.
-** The descriptor that specifies the text of a menu item can now be an
-evaluated expression.  This makes this descriptor parallel with
-others, which can also be expressions.
 * Changes in XEmacs 21.0
 ========================
 ** The code XEmacs uses to assemble its various paths into the
 directory hierarchy has been rewritten to support the package system.
 Look under "Startup Paths" in the Info documentation for more
 information.
-*** site-lisp is no longer part of the load-path by default.
+*** site-lisp is now longer part of the load-path by default.
 Its use is deprecated, but you can specify --with-site-lisp=yes at the
 configure command line to get it back.
 *** `Info-default-directory-list' is now obsolete.  If you want to
 change the path which XEmacs uses to search for info files, set

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comparison etc/NEWS @ 412:697ef44129c6 r21-2-14