xemacs-beta: etc/NEWS comparison

comparison etc/NEWS @ 398:74fd4e045ea6 r21-2-29

Import from CVS: tag r21-2-29

author	cvs
date	Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:13:30 +0200
parents	6719134a07c2
children	2f8bb876ab1d

comparison

equal deleted inserted replaced

-:f4aeb21a5bad
+:74fd4e045ea6
 * Changes in XEmacs 21.2
 ========================
-** Interactive searching and matching case improvements:
+** The delete key now deletes forward by default.
-Case sensitiveness in searching operations is controled by the variable
-`case-fold-search' (if non-nil, case is ignored while searching). This
+This is regulated by the variable `delete-key-deletes-forward', which
-mechanism has now been slightly improved in the case of an interactive
+now defaults to t.  `delete-key-deletes-forward' takes effect only on
-search: if the search string (or regexp) happens to contain uppercase
+the systems that offer both a backspace and a delete key.  If set to
-characters, the searching is forced to be case-sensitive, regardless of
+nil, the key labeled "Delete" will always delete backward.  If set to
-the value of `case-fold-search'. This behavior affects all functions
+non-nil, the "Delete" key will delete forward, except on keyboards
-performing interactive searches, like `zap-to-char', `tags-search',
+where a "Backspace" key is not provided (e.g. old DEC keyboards.)
-`occur' etc.
+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.
+** 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 specifying:
+(set-specifier default-gutter-visible-p nil)
+in your `.emacs'.  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..
+** 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.
+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
 base buffer and all other buffers.  An indirect buffer cannot itself
 be visiting a file (though its base buffer can be).  The base buffer
 cannot itself be indirect.
 Use (make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER NAME) to make an indirect buffer
-named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER.  If BASE-BUFFER is an indirect
+named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER.  If BASE-BUFFER is itself an
-buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new buffer.
+indirect buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new
+buffer.
 You can make an indirect buffer current, or switch to it in a window,
 just as you would a non-indirect buffer.
-The function `buffer-base-buffer', given an indirect buffer, returns
+The function `buffer-base-buffer' returns a buffer's base buffer or
-its base buffer.  It returns nil when given an ordinary buffer (not
+nil, if given an ordinary (non-indirect) buffer.  The function
-indirect).  `buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect
+`buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect children of
-children of a base buffer.
+a base buffer.
+** 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.
+** 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>/.emacs -user-init-directory ~<user>/.xemacs.
+** New variable `mswindows-meta-activates-menu'.
+If you set this variable to nil then pressing the Alt key under
+MS-Windows will no longer activate the menubar. The default is t.
+** 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.
+** 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
 ==========================================
-** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
+** A new portable dumper is available for beta testing.
-`base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
-and `base64-decode-string'.
+Olivier Galibert has written a portable dumper for XEmacs, based on
+initial work by Kyle Jones.  Normally, XEmacs C sources link into an
-** Many basic lisp operations are now faster.
+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.  NOTE: it is expected that `make' will fail after
+dumping `xemacs.dmp'.  This is because Makefiles have not yet been
+modified to not expect `temacs' producing an `xemacs' executable.  You
+can try it out by simply running `src/temacs'.  If it starts without
+failure, the portable dumping worked.
+#### NOTE: the portable dumper is not really usable yet, because the
+state of built-in variables is not yet saved.  Olivier promised to fix
+it.  Nag, nag.
+** 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.
 A general overhaul of the lisp engine should produce a speedup of 1.4
 in a Latin-1 XEmacs, and 2.1 in a Mule XEmacs.  These numbers were
-obtained running (byte-compile "simple.el"), which should be a pretty
+obtained running `(byte-compile "simple.el")', which should be a
-typical test of `pure' lisp.
+pretty typical test of "pure" Lisp.
-Lisp hash tables have been re-implemented.  The Common Lisp style hash
+*** Lisp hash tables have been re-implemented.  The Common Lisp style
-table interface has been made standard, and moved from cl.el into fast
+hash table interface has been made standard, and moved from cl.el into
-C code (See the section on hash tables in the XEmacs Lisp Reference).
+fast C code (See the section on hash tables in the XEmacs Lisp
-A speedup factor of 3 can be expected with code that makes intensive
+Reference).  A speedup factor of 3 can be expected with code that
-use of hash tables.
+makes intensive use of hash tables.
-The garbage collector has been tuned, leading to a speedup of 1.16.
+*** The garbage collector has been tuned, leading to a speedup of
+1.16.
-The family of functions that iterate over lists, like `memq', and
+*** The family of functions that iterate over lists, like `memq', and
 `rassq', have been made a little faster (typically 1.3).
-Lisp function calls are faster, by approximately a factor of two.
+*** Lisp function calls are faster, by approximately a factor of two.
-However, defining inline functions (via defsubst) still make sense.
+However, defining inline functions (via defsubst) still makes sense
+for tight loops.
-And finally, a few functions have had dramatic performance
-improvements.  For example, (last long-list) is now 30 times faster.
+*** Finally, a few functions have had dramatic performance
+improvements.  For example, `(last long-list)' is now 30 times faster.
 Of course, your mileage will vary.
 Many operations do not see any improvement.  Surprisingly, running
-(font-lock-refontify-buffer) does not use the Lisp engine much at all.
+(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.
-** New hash table implementation
+** Hash tables have been reimplemented.
 As was pointed out above, the standard interface to hash tables is now
 the Common Lisp interface, as described in Common Lisp, the Language
 (CLtL2, by Steele).  The older interface (functions with names
 containing the phrase `hashtable') will continue to work, but the
 preferred interface now has names containing the phrase `hash-table'.
 clrhash to manipulate entries in the hash table.  See the (updated)
 Lisp Reference Manual for details.
 ** Lisp code handles circular lists much more robustly.
 Many basic lisp functions used to loop forever when given a circular
-list.  Now this is more likely to trigger a `circular-list' error.
+list, expecting you to C-g (quit) out of the loop.  Now this is more
-Printing a circular list now results in something like this:
+likely to trigger a `circular-list' error.  Printing a circular list
+now results in something like this:
-(progn (setq x (cons 'foo 'foo)) (setcdr x x) x)
-==> (foo ... <circular list>)
+(let ((x (cons 'foo 'foo)))
+(setcdr x x)
+x)
+=> (foo ... <circular list>)
 An extra bonus is that checking for circularities is not just
-friendlier, but actually faster than checking for quit.
+friendlier, but actually faster than checking for C-g.
+** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
+`base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
+and `base64-decode-string'.
+** The functions `read-string', `read-expression', `eval-minibuffer',
+`read-variable', `read-command', `read-function', `read-number',
+`read-shell-command', `read-from-minibuffer', and `completing-read'
+now take an additional argument which specifies the default value.  If
+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
+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
+elements of load-path of the form "~/..." used to not work.
+locate-file is now guaranteed to expand files during its course of
+operation.
+** `translate-region' has been improved in several ways.  Its TABLE
+argument used to be a 256-character string.  In addition to this, it
+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
+char-table, you can map characters to strings instead of to other
+characters.  For instance:
+(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 "foo")
+(intern-soft "foo")
+=> foo
+(intern-soft (make-symbol "foo"))
+=> nil
+** The `keywordp' function now returns non-nil only on symbols
+interned in the global obarray.  For example:
+(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.
 * Changes in XEmacs 21.0
 ========================
 .xemacs-options from your .emacs.
 ** When the Zmacs region is active, `M-x query-replace' and the other
 replace commands now operate on the region contents only.
-** Using the new `-private' option, you can make XEmacs use a private
+** XEmacs now is able to choose X visuals and use private colormaps.
-colormap.
+The '-visual <visualStr>' command line option or the '.EmacsVisual'
+Xresource controls which visual XEmacs will use, and
+'-privateColormap' or '.privateColormap' will force XEmacs to create a
+private colormap for use.  The syntax for the visual string is
+"<visual><bitdepth>" where <visual> is one of 'StaticColor',
+'TrueColor', 'GrayScale', 'PseudoColor' or 'DirectColor' and
+<bitdepth> is the appropriate number of bits per pixel.  If an invalid
+or non-supported combination is entered, XEmacs attempts to find a happy
+medium.  The X creation mechanism will then determine if it needs to
+create a colormap for use, or the presence of the private flags will
+force it to create it.
 ** The `imenu' package has been ported to XEmacs and is available as a
 package.
 ** `echo-keystrokes' can now be a floating-point number, so that you
 ** Gnuserv changes
 *** Like the old 'gnudoit' program. Gnuclient -batch now can read from stdin.
-*** Again like the old 'gnudoit' program, gnuclient now can return multiple
+*** Gnuclient -batch no longer breaks off the output at the first LF.
-lines.
 ** C mode changes
 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
 and as recognized syntax.  New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
 ** 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 now longer part of the load-path by default.
+*** site-lisp is no 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 @ 398:74fd4e045ea6 r21-2-29