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- -*- mode:outline -*-
-
- * Introduction
- ==============
-
- This file presents some general information about XEmacs. It is primarily
- about the evolution of XEmacs and its release history.
-
- There are three sections.
-
- Introduction................(this section) provides an introduction
-
- Using Outline Mode..........briefly explains how to use outline mode
-
- XEmacs Release Notes........details of the changes between releases
-
- New users should look at the next section on "Using Outline Mode". You will
- be more efficient when you can navigate quickly through this file. Users
- interested in some of the details of how XEmacs differs from GNU Emacs
- should read the section "What's Different?".
-
- Users who would like to know which capabilities have been introduced
- in each release should look at the appropriate subsection of the
- "XEmacs Release Notes." Starting with version 20.0, XEmacs includes
- ChangeLogs, which can be consulted for a more detailed list of
- changes.
-
- N.B. The term "FSF GNU Emacs" refers to any release of Emacs Version 19
- from the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project. (We do not say just
- "GNU Emacs" because Richard M. Stallman ["RMS"] thinks that this term
- is too generic; although we sometimes say e.g. "GNU Emacs 19.30" to refer
- to a specific version of FSF GNU Emacs. We do not say merely "Emacs", as
- RMS prefers, because that is clearly an even more generic term.) The term
- "XEmacs" refers to this program or to its predecessors "Era" and
- "Lucid Emacs". The predecessor of all these program is called "Emacs 18".
- When no particular version is implied, "Emacs" will be used.
-
-
- * Using Outline Mode
- ====================
-
- This file is in outline mode, a major mode for viewing (or editing)
- outlines. It allows you to make parts of the text temporarily invisible so
- that you can see just the overall structure of the outline.
-
- There are two ways of using outline mode: with keys or with menus. Using
- outline mode with menus is the simplest and is just as effective as using
- keystrokes. There are menus for outline mode on the menubar as well as in
- popup menus activated by pressing mouse button 3.
-
- Experiment with the menu commands. Menu items under "Headings" allow
- you to navigate from heading to heading. Menu items under "Show" make
- visible portions of the outline while menu items under "Hide" do the
- opposite.
-
- A special minor mode called "outl-mouse" has been automatically enabled. In
- this minor mode, glyphs appear that, when clicked on, will alternately hide
- or show sections of the outline.
-
- You may at any time press `C-h m' to get a listing of the outline mode key
- bindings. They are reproduced here:
-
- Commands:
- C-c C-n outline-next-visible-heading move by visible headings
- C-c C-p outline-previous-visible-heading
- C-c C-f outline-forward-same-level similar but skip subheadings
- C-c C-b outline-backward-same-level
- C-c C-u outline-up-heading move from subheading to heading
-
- C-c C-t make all text invisible (not headings).
- M-x show-all make everything in buffer visible.
-
- The remaining commands are used when point is on a heading line.
- They apply to some of the body or subheadings of that heading.
- C-c C-d hide-subtree make body and subheadings invisible.
- C-c C-s show-subtree make body and subheadings visible.
- C-c tab show-children make direct subheadings visible.
- No effect on body, or subheadings 2 or more levels down.
- With arg N, affects subheadings N levels down.
- C-c C-c make immediately following body invisible.
- C-c C-e make it visible.
- C-c C-l make body under heading and under its subheadings invisible.
- The subheadings remain visible.
- C-c C-k make all subheadings at all levels visible.
-
-
- XEmacs Release Notes
- ====================
-
- * Future Plans for XEmacs
- ==========================
-
- ** XEmacs will be unbundled into constituent installable packages.
-
- The XEmacs distribution has grown very large. We plan the future
- distribution to contain a much smaller amount of code for basic
- functionality, with all the popular Lisp packages being available in
- the form of easy-to-install add-ons.
-
- ** We are working on improving the Mule support in future releases:
-
- *** More user-level documentation on using Mule.
-
- *** XEmacs/Mule will run on a tty.
-
- ** XEmacs will have a native Microsoft Windows port.
-
-
- * Changes in XEmacs 20.4
- ========================
-
- ** Egg/SJ3 is now available for the input of Japanese.
-
- ** Hyperbole and Oobr are no longer distributed with XEmacs.
-
- ** The following Lisp Packages were updated.
-
- *** python-mode.el-3.28 courtesy of Barry Warsaw.
-
- *** VM 6.43 courtesy of Kyle Jones.
-
- *** W3-4.0-pre14 courtesy of William Perry.
-
- *** CC-mode-5.20 courtesy of Barry Warsaw and Martin Stjernholm.
-
- **** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation, and
- as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is assigned
- to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro definition.
-
- **** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified (i.e. top-level)
- .emacs file variable setings and customizations. Style "cc-mode" is
- an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu" style is still the
- default however.
-
- **** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
-
- **** New commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which are not
- bound by default to C-M-a and C-M-e.
-
- **** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
- and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
-
- **** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
- namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
-
- **** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
- makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
-
- **** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
- c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
-
- **** Various Imenu patches (thanks to Masatake Yamato, Jan Dubois, and
- Peter Pilgrim).
-
- **** Performance improvements. Some improvements affect only Emacs or
- only XEmacs (see the variable c-enable-xemacs-performance-kludge-p).
-
- **** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You should
- now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire package
- loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
- variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is set to t by
- default.
-
- **** Usual assortment of bug fixes.
-
-
- *** bibtex.el was updated courtesy of Dirk Herrmann
-
- *** bib-cite.el-3.07 courtesy of Peter S. Galbraith
-
- *** font-latex.el-0.509 courtesy of Peter S. Galbraith
-
- *** reftex.el & manual courtesy of Carsten Dominik
-
- ** The Microsoft Windows porting effort was moved into the 20.5
- development track.
-
- More coders are needed. This effort is now coordinated by a mailing
- list at <xemacs-nt@xemacs.org>. Mail to <xemacs-nt-request@xemacs.org>
- to subscribe.
-
- ** Ispell.el was updated to fix some Mule-related problems.
-
- ** Quail was updated to fix some problems entering Latin-1.
-
- ** Various build problems on SGI/Irix were fixed.
-
- ** The build procedure was changed to rebuild everything by default.
-
- ** The Gnus Reference card was updated.
-
- ** POP support in movemail was fixed.
-
- ** icomplete.el was improved.
-
- Icomplete is now fully usable with rsz-minibuf, and should be faster.
-
- ** Mouse drag tracking now works correctly with toolbars on the sides
- of the frame.
-
- ** man-mode does not use the `-s' as readily as it used to.
-
- ** The autosave message: `... consider M-x recover-file' now correctly
- prints the name of the file.
-
- ** The function `auto-compression-mode' is now a valid way to turn on
- jka-compr compression mode.
-
- ** Dead key processing should work much better now.
-
- ** `.class' is now an ignored extension in filename completion.
-
- ** `shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer' has been fixed.
-
- The algorithm it uses has been Modified so that it calculates the
- amount it can shrink the buffer by shrinking the buffer itself first.
-
- ** The default for `compilation-mouse-motion-initiate-parsing' has
- been reverted back to t.
-
- ** ispell now supports Norwegian.
-
- ** The Gnus toolbar button now respects `toolbar-news-use-separate-frame'.
-
- ** Misplaced MIME attachments with tm and MH-E.
-
- If tm is used with mh-e, tm calculates incorrect locations for the
- MIME attachments. The symptom is that, when the TAB key is used to
- move the cursor from attachment to attachment, the cursor does not
- move to the correct location (the start of an attachment); instead,
- the cursor is moved to a seemingly random location. This is now
- fixed.
-
- ** The Gnus GNU splash icon now works better with background pixmaps.
-
- ** TAB spacing in dialog boxes is now fixed.
-
- ** Background pixmaps for the modeline now work.
-
- ** Electric /'s and ~'s typed in the minibuffer can be set so they
- are no longer as destructive. This new behavior is controlled by
- `minibuffer-electric-file-name-behavior'.
-
- ** Face creation has been speeded up.
-
- ** The function `init-toolbar-from-resources' now works.
-
- ** lazy-shot has been fixed.
-
- lazy-shot no longer bugs out when setting `lazy-shot-stealth-time' to
- nil and when visiting a buffer smaller than `lazy-shot-minimum-size'.
-
- ** Mail mode parsing of the Resent-To header no longer bugs out when
- recipients are on continuation lines.
-
- ** Gnus backspace bindings now work with the changed semantics of the
- backspace and delete keys.
-
- ** XEmacs should build better when using a parallel make.
-
-
- * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 20.3
- ==========================================
-
-
- * Changes in XEmacs 20.3
- ========================
-
- ** Quail input method is now available.
-
- Quail is a simple key-translation system that allows users to input
- any multilingual text from normal ASCII keyboard. This means that
- XEmacs with Mule now supports a number of European languages.
-
- ** More Windows NT support.
-
- Thanks to efforts of many people, coordinated by David Hobley
- <davidh@wr.com.au> and Marc Paquette <marcpa@cam.org>, beta versions
- of XEmacs now run on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows NT and Windows
- 95). The current betas require having an X server to run XEmacs;
- however, a native NT/95 port is in alpha, thanks to Jonathan Harris
- <jhar@tardis.ed.ac.uk>.
-
- The NT development is now coordinated by a mailing list at
- <xemacs-nt@xemacs.org>. Mail to <xemacs-nt-request@xemacs.org> to
- subscribe.
-
- ** Multiple TTY frames are now available.
-
- On consoles that display only one frame at a time (e.g. TTY consoles),
- creating a new frame with `C-x 5 2' also raises and selects that
- frame. The behavior of window system frames is unchanged.
-
- ** Package starting changes.
-
- State of Emacs should never be changed with loading a package. The
- following XEmacs packages that used to break this have been changed.
-
- *** Loading `paren' no longer enables paren-blinking. Use
- `paren-set-mode' explicitly, or customize `paren-mode'.
-
- *** Loading `uniquify' no longer enables uniquify. Set
- `uniquify-buffer-name-style' to a legal value.
-
- *** Loading `time' no longer enables display time. Invoke
- `display-time' explicitly.
-
- *** Loading `jka-compr' no longer enables on-the-fly compression. Use
- `toggle-auto-compression' instead.
-
- *** Loading `id-select' no longer enables its behaviour. Use
- `id-select-install' instead.
-
- ** Zmacs region is not deactivated when an error is signaled.
-
- The behavior of the zmacs region can now be controlled in the event of
- a signaled error. The new variable `errors-deactivate-region' may be
- set to nil to revert to the old behaviour. As before, typing C-g
- deactivates the region.
-
- ** Multiple Info `dir' functionality has been merged with GNU Emacs
- 19.34.
-
- XEmacs will now correctly merge all the `dir' files in
- `Info-directory-list' (initialized from either `INFOPATH'
- env. variable or `Info-default-directory-list'.) These files may be
- full-fledged info files containing subnodes or menus. Previously
- supported `localdir' files are looked for also, secondary to `dir's.
- See the manual for details.
-
- ** Abbreviations can now contain non-word characters.
-
- This means that it is finally possible to do such simple things as
- define `#in' to expand to `#include' in C mode, `s-c-b' to
- `save-current-buffer' in Lisp mode, `call/cc' to
- `call-with-current-continuation' in Scheme mode, etc.
-
- ** `C-x n d' now runs the new command `narrow-to-defun',
- which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
- the current defun.
-
- ** The new command `C-x 4 0' (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
- current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
- confirmation first.
-
- ** `ESC ESC ESC' (keyboard-escape-quit) will now correctly abort
- recursive edits (as documented.)
-
- ** arc-mode has a new function called `archive-quit' bound to q, which
- quits archive mode in the same fashion dired-quit works.
-
- ** A `tetris' clone is now available within XEmacs, written by Glynn
- Clements. Try it out with `M-x tetris'.
-
- ** The feature to teach the key bindings of extended commands now
- prints the message after the command finishes. After some time, the
- previous echo area contents are restored (in case the command prints
- something useful).
-
- ** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
- move point a short distance off the screen, XEmacs will scroll the
- screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
- does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
-
- ** Face background colors now take precedence over the default face
- background pixmap, which means that background pixmaps no longer clash
- with zmacs-regions, or clickable buttons.
-
- ** Regexps can now contain additional Perl-like constructs.
-
- ** Modifiers can be added to a keystroke by preceding it with a `C-x @
- <x>' sequence where <x> is one of letters `S', `c', `m', `a', `h', `s'
- corresponding to shift, control, meta, alt, hyper, and super modifiers,
- respectively. It is possible to add several modifiers by repeating this
- sequence. This feature is especially useful on text terminals where it
- allows one to enter keystrokes like, e.g., `M-home'.
-
- ** Customize changes.
-
- *** Customize has undergone a massive speedup, and should now operate
- acceptably fast. Slowness of the interface used to be the biggest
- gripe.
-
- *** Many more packages have been modified to use the facility, so
- almost all of XEmacs options can now be examined through the Customize
- groups.
-
- *** There is a new `browser' mode of traversing customizations, in
- many ways easier to follow than the standard one. Try it out with
- `M-x customize-browse'.
-
- ** Pending-delete changes.
-
- *** Pending-delete is now a minor mode, with the normal minor-mode
- semantics and toggle functions. Old functions are left for
- compatibility.
-
- *** Loading pending-del no longer turns on pending-delete mode. In
- fact, it is no longer necessary to explicitly load pending-del. All
- you need to do to turn on pending-delete is run the pending-delete
- function:
-
- Within XEmacs: Type M-x pending-delete <ret>
- not M-x load-library <ret> pending-delete <ret>
-
- In .emacs: Use (turn-on-pending-delete)
- not (load "pending-del")
-
- ** XEmacs can now save the minibuffer histories from various
- minibuffers. To use this feature, add the line:
-
- (savehist-load)
-
- to your .emacs. This will load the minibuffer histories (if any) at
- startup, as well as instruct XEmacs to save them before exiting. You
- can use Customize to add or remove the histories being saved.
-
- ** The default format for ChangeLog entries (as created by `C-x 4 a')
- is now the international ISO 8601 format.
-
- To revert to the old behaviour, use:
-
- (setq add-log-time-format 'current-time-string)
-
- Or `M-x customize RET add-log RET'.
-
- ** In ChangeLog mode, you can now press `C-c C-c' to save the file
- and restore old window configuration, or `C-c C-k' to abandon the
- changes.
-
- ** The key `C-x m' no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
- Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
- composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
- `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
- `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
- behavior.
-
- C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
- compose-mail-other-frame.
-
- ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file, if there are any
- registers that save positions in the file, these register values no
- longer become completely useless. If you try to go to such a register
- with `C-x j', then you are asked whether to visit the file again. If
- you say yes, it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
-
- ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
- example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
- be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
- you visit the file afresh with `C-x C-f'.
-
- You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
- variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
- file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
- revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
- only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
-
- ** Gnuserv changes
-
- *** The Lisp part of gnuserv has been rewritten to allow for more
- flexibility and features.
-
- *** Many new options and variables are now customizable. Try
- `M-x customize RET gnuserv RET'.
-
- *** The functionality of `gnuattach' and `gnudoit' programs is
- provided by `gnuclient', which now accepts the standard `-nw',
- `-display', `-eval' and `-f' options.
-
- ** Etags changes.
-
- *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
- default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
- Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
- variables that are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
- not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
-
- *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
-
- *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
- constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
-
- *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
- recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
- In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
-
- *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
- C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
- recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
- methods and protocols.
-
- *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
- .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
- column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
- paragraph name.
-
- *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
- an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
- at least M times and as many as N times.
-
- ** Ada mode changes.
-
- *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
- If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
- procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
- you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
- stubs.
-
- *** There are two new commands:
- - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
- - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
-
- The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
- `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
- `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
-
- *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
- is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
- Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
-
- *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
- formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
- places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
- space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
-
- ** New demand based locking implementation
-
- A faster, but experimental replacement for lazy-lock (called lazy-shot) is
- provided. Like lazy-lock it provides demand based and idle time
- font-lock-ing. However the lazy-lock versions that came with previous
- versions slowed down XEmacs (possibly quite a lot). Lazy-shot solves
- this problem by relying on new support from the C code part of XEmacs.
- The support however is experimental and will cause some flashing as
- parts of the buffer are colored. This likely to change in the future
- as the C support is completed.
-
- The current lazy-shot implementation is mostly interface compatible
- with lazy-lock v2.06 (the version shipped with XEmacs is v1.x).
-
- *** To enable:
- 1. Despite the flashing, lazy-shot was deemed such an improvement by
- the majority of beta testers that it is now the standard method
- provided by the options menu. Alternatively add
-
- (add-hook 'font-lock-mode-hook 'turn-on-lazy-shot)
-
- to '.emacs'.
- 2. If you were using lazy-lock before, just replace all occurrences of
- "lazy-lock" by "lazy-shot" in your '.emacs' file.
-
- *** To disable:
-
- If prefer to use lazy-lock in stead of lazy-shot, put
-
- (remove-hook 'font-lock-mode-hook 'turn-on-lazy-shot)
- (add-hook 'font-lock-mode-hook 'turn-on-lazy-lock)
-
- at the END of `.emacs'.
-
- ** RefTeX mode
-
- RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label{}, \ref{}
- and \cite{} macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
- different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
- multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
- turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
-
- C-c ( reftex-label
- Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
- knows which kind of label is needed.
-
- C-c ) reftex-reference
- Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
- label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
-
- C-c [ reftex-citation
- Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
- database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
-
- C-c & reftex-view-crossref
- Views the cross reference of a \ref{} or \cite{} command near point.
-
- C-c = reftex-toc
- Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
- can quickly jump to every section.
-
- Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
- commands. Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
- reftex.el. You can use the finder to view this information:
- C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
-
-
- * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 20.3
- ==========================================
-
- ** Autoconf 2 is supported, making XEmacs more conforming to
- conventions used by other free software.
-
- ** `tty-erase-char' is a new variable that reports which character
- was set up as the terminal's erase character at the time Emacs was
- started.
-
- ** It is now possible to attach the menubar accelerator keys to menu
- entries. Look at the Lispref under Menus->Menu Accelerators for
- details.
-
- ** `insert-file-contents' can now read from a special file,
- as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
-
- ** `string-to-number' now accepts an optional BASE argument that
- specifies which base to use. The default base is 10.
-
- ** The TIME argument to `format-time-string' is now optional and
- defaults to the current time.
-
- ** The PATTERN argument to `split-string' is now optional and defaults
- to whitespace ("[ \f\t\n\r\v]+").
-
- ** `set-extent-properties' is a new function that can be used to
- change properties of an extent at once, and is analogous to
- `set-frame-properties'.
-
- ** If a format field width is specified as `*', the field width is
- now assumed to have been specified as an argument (as in C.)
-
- (format "%*s" 10 "abc")
- => " abc"
-
- ** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
- conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
-
- (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
-
- BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
- BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
- The old `eval-in-buffer' macro is obsoleted by `with-current-buffer'.
-
- ** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
- choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
- restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
- works using `save-current-buffer'.
-
- ** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
- write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
- of the last form.
-
- ** The variable `debug-ignored-errors' now works in XEmacs. It allows
- one to ignore the debugger for some common errors, even when
- `debug-on-error' is t. It has no effect when `debug-on-signal' is
- non-nil.
-
- ** The new function `current-message' returns the message currently
- displayed in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
-
- ** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
- directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
- they no longer do anything special with // or /~. The same goes for
- `expand-file-name'. That conversion is now done only in
- `substitute-in-file-name'.
-
- This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
- begins with ~.
-
- ** The regexp matcher has been extended to recognize the following
- constructs, borrowed from Perl:
-
- *** Additional quantifiers.
-
- In addition to `*', `+' and `?', XEmacs now recognizes the following
- quantifiers:
-
- \{n\} Match exactly n times
- \{n,\} Match at least n times
- \{n,m\} Match at least n but not more than m times
-
- *** Non-greedy quantifiers.
-
- Any of the standard quantifiers (`*', `+' and others) can now be
- followed by an optional `?', which will make them become "non-greedy",
- i.e. they will match as little text as possible. Note that the
- meanings don't change, just the "gravity."
-
- *** Shy groups.
-
- The \(?: ... \) groups things like \( ... \), but doesn't record the
- context for backreferences or future use. This is useful when you
- need a lot of groups for the sake of priorities, but actually want to
- record only one or two.
-
- ** The new function `regexp-opt' returns an efficient regexp to match
- a string. The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This
- function can be used where regexp matching or searching is intensively
- used and speed is important, e.g., in Font Lock mode.
-
- ** The featurep syntax has been extended to resemble the Common Lisp
- one, as suggested by Erik Naggum.
-
- *** The `xemacs' feature is defined in XEmacs by default.
-
- *** The expression `#+fexp form' is equivalent to
- (when (featurep fexp) form), only it is evaluated at read-time. Also,
- `#-fexp form' is equivalent to (unless (featurep fexp) form).
-
- *** In addition to symbols, a FEXP can also be a number, or a logical
- operator. Here are some examples:
- ;; evaluates to non-nil on XEmacs:
- (featurep 'xemacs)
- ;; evaluates to non-nil on XEmacs 20.3 or later:
- (featurep '(and xemacs 20.03))
- ;; evaluates to non-nil either on Emacs, or on XEmacs built without
- ;; X support:
- (featurep '(or emacs (and xemacs (not x))))
-
-
-
- * Changes in XEmacs 20.2
- ========================
-
- ** Why XEmacs 20.1 is called 20.2
-
- Testing of XEmacs 20.1 revealed a number of showstopping bugs at the
- very final moment. Instead of confusing the version numbers further,
- the `20.1' designation was abandoned, and the release was renamed to
- `20.2'.
-
- ** Delete/backspace keysyms have been separated
-
- The Delete and Backspace keysyms are now no longer identical. A better
- version of delbackspace.el has been added called delbs.el.
-
- ** XEmacs 20.0 MULE API supported for backwards compatibility
-
- XEmacs 20.2 primarily supports the MULE 3 API. It now also supports
- the XEmacs 20.0 MULE API.
-
- ** The logo has been changed, and the default background color is
- now a shade of gray instead of the eye-burning white.
-
- The sample .Xdefaults and .emacs files contain examples of how to
- revert to the old background color.
-
- ** Default modeline colors are now less of a color-salad.
-
- ** The `C-z' key now iconifies only the current X frame. You can use
- `C-x C-z' to get the old behavior.
-
- On the tty frames `C-z' behaves as before.
-
- ** The command `display-time' now draws a pretty image in the modeline
- when new mail arrives. It also supports balloon-help messages.
-
- ** Various commands that were previously disabled are now enabled, like
- eval-expression (`M-:') and upcase-region (`C-x C-u')/downcase-region
- (`C-x C-l').
-
- ** It is now possible to customize the functions called by XEmacs toolbar.
-
- Type `M-x customize RET toolbar RET' to customize it. Customizations
- include the choice of functions for the buttons to invoke, as well as
- a wide choice of mailers and newsreaders to invoked by the respective
- functions.
-
- ** `temp-buffer-shrink-to-fit' now defaults to nil.
-
- There are unresolved issues regarding this feature, which is why the
- XEmacs developers decided to disable it by default.
-
- ** `ps-print-color-p' now defaults to nil.
-
- This is because the new default background color is non-white. The
- `Printing Options' in the `Options' menu now include an item that
- enables color printing, and sets the white background.
-
- ** `line-number-mode' should be used to get line numbers in the
- modeline, and `column-number-mode' to get column numbers. Line
- numbers now number from 1 by default.
-
- ** font-lock-mode will now correctly fontify `int a, b, c;'
- expressions in C mode.
-
- ** The blinking cursor is always "on" during movement.
-
- ** The XEmacs build process has been changed to make site
- administration easier. See lisp/site-load.el for details.
-
- ** Numerous causes of crashes have been fixed. XEmacs should now be
- even more stable than before.
-
- ** configure no longer defaults to using --with-xim=motif if Motif libraries
- are linked.
-
- There are many bugs in the Xlib XIM support in X11R6.3.
-
- ** A number of new packages are added, and many packages were
- updated.
-
- ** Gnus-5.4.52, courtesy of Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
-
- *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
-
- *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
- Gnus.
-
- *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
- `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
-
- *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
- article mode line.
-
- *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
-
- *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
-
- (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
-
- *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
- are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
- `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
-
- *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
-
- *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
-
- *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
- See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
-
- *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
- Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
- used to pick articles.
-
- *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
- another have been added.
-
- `M-x gnus-change-server'
-
- *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
- generating lines in buffers.
-
- *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
- `M-C-_'.
-
- *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
-
- *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
-
- (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
-
- *** Scores can be decayed.
-
- (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
-
- *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
- Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
-
- *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
- the native server.
-
- `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
-
- *** A new command for reading collections of documents
- (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
-
- *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
-
- *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
- even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
-
- *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
- (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
-
- Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
- a group.
-
- *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
- sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
-
- See the commands under the `T S' submap.
-
- *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
-
- See the commands under the `G P' submap.
-
- *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
-
- Use the `Y c' command.
-
- *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
-
- *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
-
- `M-x nnmail-split-history'
-
- *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
- from incoming mail before saving the mail.
-
- See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
-
- *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
-
- ** Custom 1.86, courtesy of Per Abrahamsen
-
- The Customize library enables Emacs Lisp programmers to specify types
- of their variables, so that the users can customize them.
-
- Invoke the customizations buffer using the menus (Customize is at the
- top of the Options menu), or using commands `M-x customize',
- `M-x customize-variable' and `M-x customize-face'. Customize can save
- the changed settings to your `.emacs' file.
-
- Customize is now the preferred way to change XEmacs settings. Tens of
- packages have been converted to take advantage of the Customize
- features, including Gnus, Message, Supercite, Psgml, Comint, W3,
- cc-mode (and many other programming language modes), ispell.el,
- ps-print.el, id-select.el, most of the programming language modes, and
- many many more.
-
- See the "Lisp Changes" section later for a short description of why
- and how to add custom support to your Lisp packages. Custom is also
- documented in the XEmacs info manuals.
-
- ** W3-3.0.86, courtesy of William Perry
-
- Version 3 of Emacs/W3, the Emacs World Wide Web browser, has been
- included. It is significantly faster than any of the previous
- versions, and contains numerous new features.
-
- ** AUCTeX-9.7k, courtesy of Per Abrahamsen
-
- AUC TeX is a comprehensive customizable integrated environment for
- writing input files for LaTeX using Emacs.
-
- AUC TeX lets you run TeX/LaTeX and other LaTeX-related tools, such as
- a output filters or post processor from inside Emacs. Especially
- `running LaTeX' is interesting, as AUC TeX lets you browse through the
- errors TeX reported, while it moves the cursor directly to the
- reported error, and displays some documentation for that particular
- error. This will even work when the document is spread over several
- files.
-
- AUC TeX automatically indents your `LaTeX-source', not only as you
- write it -- you can also let it indent and format an entire document.
- It has a special outline feature, which can greatly help you `getting
- an overview' of a document.
-
- Apart from these special features, AUC TeX provides an large range of
- handy Emacs macros, which in several different ways can help you write
- your LaTeX documents fast and painless.
-
- ** redo.el-1.01, courtesy of Kyle Jones
-
- redo.el is a package that implements true redo mechanism in XEmacs
- buffers. Once you load it from your `.emacs', you can bind the `redo'
- command to a convenient key to use it.
-
- Emacs' normal undo system allows you to undo an arbitrary number of
- buffer changes. These undos are recorded as ordinary buffer changes
- themselves. So when you break the chain of undos by issuing some
- other command, you can then undo all the undos. The chain of recorded
- buffer modifications therefore grows without bound, truncated only at
- garbage collection time.
-
- The redo/undo system is different in two ways:
-
- *** The undo/redo command chain is only broken by a buffer modification.
-
- You can move around the buffer or switch buffers and still come back
- and do more undos or redos.
-
- *** The `redo' command rescinds the most recent undo without
- recording the change as a _new_ buffer change.
-
- It completely reverses the effect of the undo, which includes making
- the chain of buffer modification records shorter by one, to counteract
- the effect of the undo command making the record list longer by one.
-
- ** edmacro.el-3.10, courtesy of Dave Gillespie, ported to XEmacs by
- Hrvoje Niksic.
-
- Edmacro is a utility that provides easy editing of keyboard macros.
- Originally written by Dave Gillespie, it has been mostly rewritten by
- Hrvoje Niksic, in order to make it distinguish characters and integer,
- as well as to adapt it to XEmacs keysyms.
-
- Press `C-x C-k' to invoke the `edit-kbd-macro' command that lets you
- edit old as well as define new keyboard macros. You can also edit the
- last 100 keystrokes and insert them into a macro to be bound to a key
- or named as a command. The recorded/edited macros can be dumped to
- `.emacs' file.
-
- ** xmine.el-1.8, courtesy of Jens Lautenbacher
-
- XEmacs now includes a minesweeper game with a full-featured graphics
- and mouse interface. Invoke with `M-x xmine'.
-
- ** efs-1.15-x5 courtesy of Andy Norman and Michael Sperber
-
- EFS is now integrated with XEmacs, and replaces the old ange-ftp. It
- has many more features, including info documentation, support for many
- different FTP servers, and integration with dired.
-
- ** mic-paren.el-1.3.1, courtesy of Mikael Sj÷din
- ** hyperbole-4.022, courtesy of Bob Weiner
- ** hm--html-menus-5.3, courtesy of Heiko Muenkel
- ** python-mode.el-2.90, courtesy of Barry Warsaw
- ** balloon-help-1.06, courtesy of Kyle Jones
- ** xrdb-mode.el-1.21, courtesy of Barry Warsaw
- ** igrep.el-2.56, courtesy of Kevin Rodgers
- ** frame-icon.el, courtesy of Michael Lamoureux and Bob Weiner
- ** itimer.el-1.05, courtesy of Kyle Jones
- ** VM-6.30, courtesy of Kyle Jones
- ** OO-Browser-2.10, courtesy of Bob Weiner
- ** viper-2.93, courtesy of Michael Kifer
- ** ediff-2.65, courtesy of Michael Kifer
- ** detached-minibuf-1.1, courtesy of Alvin Shelton
- ** whitespace-mode.el, courtesy of Heiko Muenkel
- ** winmgr-mode.el, courtesy of David Konerding, Stefan Strobel & Barry Warsaw
- ** fast-lock.el-3.11.01, courtesy of Simon Marshall
- ** lazy-lock.el-1.16, courtesy of Simon Marshall
- ** browse-cltl2.el-1.1, courtesy of Holger Schauer
- ** eldoc.el-1.10, courtesy of Noah Friedman
- ** tm-7.105, courtesy of MORIOKA Tomohiko
- ** verilog-mode.el-2.25, courtesy of Michael McNamara & Adrian Aichner
- ** overlay.el, courtesy of Joseph Nuspl
- ** live-icon.el-1.3, fixes courtesy of Karl Hegbloom
- ** tpu-edt.el, fixes courtesy of R. Kevin Oberman
- ** etags.c-11.86 Courtesy of F. Potort∞
-
-
- * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 20.2
- ==========================================
-
- ** `defcustom' and `defgroup' can now be used to specify types and
- placement of the user-settable variables.
-
- You can now specify the types of user-settable variables in your Lisp
- packages to be customized by users. To do so, use `defcustom' as a
- replacement for `defvar'.
-
- For example, the old declaration:
-
- (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
- "*non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
-
- can be rewritten as:
-
- (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
- "*non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
- :type 'boolean
- :group 'foo)
-
- From a package writer's point of view, nothing has been changed
- However, the user can now type `M-x customize RET foo-blurgoze RET' to
- customize the variable.
-
- Other, more complex data structures can be described with `defcustom'
- too, for instance:
-
- (defcustom foo-hairy-alist '((somekey . "somestring")
- (otherkey . (foo-doit))
- (thirdkey . [1 2 3]))
- "*Alist describing the hairy options of the foo package.
- The CAR of each element is a symbol, whereas the CDR can be either a
- string, a form to evaluate, or a vector of integers.
- New Emacs users simply adore alists like this one."
- :type '(repeat (cons (symbol :tag "Key")
- (choice string
- (vector (repeat :inline t integer))
- sexp)))
- :group 'foo)
-
- The user will be able to add and remove the entries to the list in a
- visually appealing way, as well as save the settings to his/her
- `.emacs'.
-
- Note that `defcustom' will also be included in GNU Emacs 19.35, and
- that both XEmacs and GNU Emacs will be using it in the future.
- Although the user-interface of customize may change, the Lisp
- interface will remain the same. This is why we recommend that you use
- `defcustom' for user-settable variables in your new Lisp packages.
-
- ** The `read-kbd-macro' function is now available.
-
- The `read-kbd-macro' function (as well as the read-time evaluated
- `kbd' macro) from the edmacro package is now available in XEmacs. For
- example:
-
- (define-key foo-mode-map (kbd "C-c <up>") 'foo-up)
-
- is completely equivalent to
-
- (define-key foo-mode-map [(control ?c) up] 'foo-up)
-
- The `kbd' macro is preferred over `read-kbd-macro' function , as it
- evaluates before compiling, thus having no loading overhead.
-
- Using `kbd' is not necessary for GNU Emacs compatibility (GNU Emacs
- supports the XEmacs-style keysyms), but adds to clarity. For example,
- (kbd "C-?") is usually easier to read than [(control ??)]. The full
- description of the syntax of keybindings accepted by `read-kbd-macro'
- is documented in the docstring of `edmacro-mode'.
-
- ** Overlay compatibility is implemented.
-
- The overlay support in XEmacs is now functional. Written by Joe
- Nuspl, the overlay compatibility library overlay.el is implemented on
- top of the native XEmacs extents, and can be used as a GNU
- Emacs-compatible way of changing display properties.
-
- ** You should use keysyms kp-* (kp-1, kp-2, ..., kp-enter etc.)
- rather than the old form kp_*. The new form is also compatible with
- GNU Emacs.
-
- ** The keysyms mouse-1, mouse-2, mouse-3 and down-mouse-1,
- down-mouse-2, and down-mouse-3 have been added for GNU Emacs
- compatibility.
-
- ** A new user variable `signal-error-on-buffer-boundary' has been
- added.
-
- Set this to variable to nil to avoid XEmacs usual lossage of zmacs
- region when moving up against a buffer boundary.
-
- ** lib-complete.el was MULE-ized.
-
- The commands `find-library', `find-library-other-window' and
- `find-library-other-frame' now take an optional coding system
- argument.
-
- ** Experimental support for Lisp reader macros #-, #+.
-
- The Common Lisp reader macros for feature test are now supported. This
- feature is present for evaluation purposes and is subject to change.
-
- ** `values' now has a setf method
-
- ** The `eval-after-load' and `eval-next-after-load' functions are
- now available.
-
- ** A bug that prevented `current-display-table' to be correctly set
- with `set-specifier' has been fixed.
-
- ** The bug in easymenu which prevented multiple menus from being
- accessible through button3 has been fixed.
-
- You can now safely use easymenu to define multiple menu entries in a
- compatible way, with the added menus accessible via button3 as local
- submenus.
-
- ** Many bugs in the scrollbar code have been fixed.
-
- ** First alpha level support of MS Windows NT is available, courtesy
- of David Hobley and Marc Paquette.
-
- ** Wnn/egg now has initial support Courtesy of Jareth Hein.
-
- ** Some old non-working code has been removed until someone chooses
- to work on it.
-
- This includes much of the NeXTStep stuff. The VMS support is also
- likely to be removed in the future.
-
- ** Many files have been purged out of the etc/ directory.
-
- If you still need the purged files, look for them in the GNU Emacs
- distribution.
-
-
- * Major Differences Between 19.14 and 20.0
- ===========================================
-
- XEmacs 20.0 is the first public release to have support for MULE
- (Multi-Lingual Emacs). The --with-mule configuration flag must be
- used to enable Mule support.
-
- Many bugs have been fixed. An effort has been made to eradicate all
- XEmacs crashes, although we are not quite done yet. The overall
- quality of XEmacs should be higher than any previous release. XEmacs
- now compiles with nary a warning with some compilers.
-
- -- Multiple character sets can be displayed in a buffer. The file
- mule-doc/demo in the distribution contains a greeting in many
- different languages.
-
- -- Although the Mule work is for all languages, particular effort has
- been invested in Japanese, with particular focus on Japanese users
- of Sun WorkShop. Many menubar labels have been translated into
- Japanese. Martin Buchholz, the maintainer of MULE features within
- XEmacs normally runs XEmacs in a Japanese language environment.
- Some of the other contributors are Japanese, most importantly
- Morioka Tomohiko, author of the TM package, providing MIME support
- for Mail and News.
-
- -- Input for complex Asian languages is supported via XIM, a mechanism
- introduced in X11R5 to allow applications to get localized input
- without knowledge of the language. The way XIM works is that when
- the locale has a complex character set, such as Japanese, and extra
- minibuffer-like status window appears attached to various
- application windows, and indicates the status of the input method.
- Composed input in XEmacs should work the same as with other
- applications. If Motif and Mule support is configured into XEmacs,
- then XIM support is automatically configured in as well.
-
- -- TM (Tools for Mime) now comes with XEmacs. This provides MIME
- (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) support for Mail and News.
- The primary author is Morioka Tomohiko.
-
- -- Japanese input can also be input using the `canna' input method.
- This support was contributed by Morioka Tomohiko. Setting up canna
- usually requires more user effort (and better knowledge of Japanese!)
- than XIM, but provides a better-integrated input method.
-
- -- A mini-tutorial on using Mule:
-
- -- Every time data passes between XEmacs and the rest of the
- environment, via file or process input or output, XEmacs must
- convert between its internal multi-character representation and
- the external representation (`coding system'). Many
- difficulties with Mule are related to controlling these coding
- system conversions.
-
- -- file-coding-system, file-coding-system-for-read,
- overriding-file-coding-system, and file-coding-system-alist
- are used to determine the coding systems used on file input
- and output.
-
- -- For each process, (set-process-input-coding-system) and
- (set-process-output-coding-system) determine the coding
- system used for I/O from the process.
-
- -- Many other things are encoded using pathname-coding-system:
- -- file and directory names
- -- window manager properties: window title, icon name
- -- process names and process arguments
- -- XIM input.
-
- -- In many cases, you will want to have the same values for all
- the above variables in many cases. For example, in a
- Japanese environment, you will want to use the 'euc-japan
- coding system consistently, except when running certain
- processes that do byte-oriented, rather than
- character-oriented I/O, such as gzip, or when processing Mail
- or News, where ISO2022-based coding systems are the norm,
- since they support multiple character sets.
-
- -- To add support for a new language or character set, start by
- trying to copy code in japanese-hooks.el.
-
- -- The traditional pre-Mule data conversion is equivalent to the
- 'binary coding system under Mule. In this case all characters
- are treated as iso8859-1 (i.e. characters for English + Western
- European languages).
-
- -- many fileio-related commands such as find-file and write-file
- take an extra argument, coding-system, which specifies the
- encoding to be used with the file on disk. For example, here is
- a command that converts from the Japanese EUC to ISO2022 format:
-
- xemacs -batch -eval '(progn (find-file
- "locale-start.el.euc" (quote euc-japan)) (write-file
- "locale-start.el" nil (quote iso-2022-8-unix)))'
-
- Interactively, you can be prompted for a coding system by
- providing a prefix argument to the fileio command. In
- particular, C-u C-x C-f is a useful sequence to edit a file
- using a particular coding system.
-
- -- In an Asian locale (i.e. if $LANG is set to ja, ko, or zh),
- XEmacs automatically sets up a language environment assuming
- that the operating system encodes information in the national
- version of EUC, which supports English and the national
- language, but typically no other character sets.
-
- -- Command line processing should work much better now - no more order
- dependencies.
-
- -- Many many package upgraded (thanks go to countless maintainers):
-
- -- ediff 2.64 (Michael Kifer)
- -- Gnus 5.2.40 (Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen)
- -- w3 3.0.51 (Bill Perry)
- -- ilisp 5.8 (Chris McConnell, Ivan Vasquez, Marco Antoniotti, Rick
- Campbell)
- -- VM 5.97 (Kyle Jones)
- -- etags 11.78 (Francesco Potorti`)
- -- ksh-mode.el 2.9
- -- vhdl-mode.el 2.73 (Rod Whitby)
- -- id-select.el (Bob Weiner)
- -- EDT/TPU emulation modes should work now for the first time.
- -- viper 2.92 (Michael Kifer) is now the `official' vi emulator for XEmacs.
- -- big-menubar should work much better now.
- -- mode-motion+.el 3.16
- -- backup-dir 2.0 (Greg Klanderman)
- -- ps-print.el-3.05 (Jacques Duthen Prestataire)
- -- lazy-lock-1.15 (Simon Marshall)
- -- reporter 3.3 (Barry Warsaw)
- -- hm--html-menus 5.0 (Heiko Muenkel)
- -- cc-mode 4.322 (Barry Warsaw)
- -- elp 2.37 (Barry Warsaw)
-
-
- -- Many new packages have been added:
- -- m4-mode 1.8 (Andrew Csillag)
- -- crisp.el - crisp/brief emulation (Gary D. Foster)
- -- Johan Vroman's iso-acc.el has been ported to XEmacs by Alexandre Oliva
- -- psgml-1.01 (Lennart Staflin, James Clark)
- -- python-mode.el 2.83 (Barry Warsaw)
- -- vrml-mode.el (Ben Wing)
- -- enriched.el, face-menu.el (Boris Goldowsky, Michael Sperber)
- -- sh-script.el (Daniel Pfeiffer)
- -- decipher.el (Christopher J. Madsen)
-
- -- New function x-keysym-on-keyboard-p helps determine keyboard
- characteristics for key rebinding:
-
- x-keysym-on-keyboard-p: (KEYSYM &optional DEVICE)
- -- a built-in function.
- Return true if KEYSYM names a key on the keyboard of DEVICE.
- More precisely, return true if pressing a physical key
- on the keyboard of DEVICE without any modifier keys generates KEYSYM.
- Valid keysyms are listed in the files /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h and in
- /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB, or whatever the equivalents are on your system.
-
- -- Installed info files are now compressed (support courtesy of Joseph J Nuspl)
-
- -- (load-average) works on Solaris, even if you're not root. Thanks to
- Hrvoje Niksic.
-
- -- OffiX drag-and-drop support added
-
- -- lots of syncing with 19.34 elisp files, most by Steven Baur
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.13 and 19.14
- ============================================
-
- XEmacs has a new address! The canonical ftp site is now
- ftp.xemacs.org:/pub/xemacs and the Web page is now at
- http://www.xemacs.org/. All mailing lists now have @xemacs.org
- addresses. For the time being the @cs.uiuc.edu addresses will
- continue to function.
-
- This is a major new release. Many features have been added, as well
- as many bugs fixed. The Motif menubar has still _NOT_ been fixed for
- 19.14. You should use the Lucid menubar instead.
-
-
-
- Major user-visible changes:
- ---------------------------
-
- -- Color support in TTY mode is provided. You have to have a TTY capable
- of displaying them, such as color xterm or the console under Linux.
- If your terminal type supports colors (e.g. `xterm-color'), XEmacs
- will automatically notice this and start using color.
-
- -- blink-cursor-mode enables a blinking text cursor. There is a
- menubar option for this also.
-
- -- auto-show-mode is turned on by default; this means that XEmacs
- will automatically scroll a window horizontally as necessary to
- keep point in view.
-
- -- a file dialog box is provided and will be used whenever you
- are prompted for a filename as a result of a menubar selection.
-
- -- XEmacs can be compiled with built-in GIF, JPEG, and PNG support.
- The GIF libraries are supplied with XEmacs; for JPEG and PNG,
- you have to obtain the appropriate libraries (this is well-
- documented). This makes image display much easier and faster under
- W3 (the web browser) and TM (adds MIME support to VM and GNUS;
- not yet included with XEmacs but will be in 19.15).
-
- -- XEmacs provides a really nice mode (PSGML with "Wing improvements")
- for editing HTML and other SGML documents. It parses the document,
- and as a result it does proper indentation, can show you the context
- you're in, the allowed tags at a particular position, etc.
-
- -- XEmacs comes standard with modes for editing Java and VRML code,
- including font-lock support.
-
- -- GNUS 5.2 comes standard with XEmacs.
-
- -- You can now embed colors in the modeline, with different sections
- of the modeline responding appropriately to various mouse gestures:
- For example, clicking on the "read-only" indicator toggles the
- read-only status of a buffer, and clicking on the buffer name
- cycles to the next buffer. Pressing button3 on these areas brings
- up a popup menu of appropriate commands.
-
- -- There is a much nicer mode for completion lists and such.
- At the minibuffer prompt, if you hit page-up or Meta-V, the completion
- buffer will be displayed (if it wasn't already), you're moved into
- it, and can move around and select filenames using the arrow keys
- and the return key. Rather than a cursor, a filename is highlighted,
- and the arrow keys change which filename is highlighted.
-
- -- The edit-faces subsystem has also been much improved, in somewhat
- similar ways to the completion list improvements.
-
- -- Many improvements were made to the multi-device support.
- We now provide an auxiliary utility called "gnuattach" that
- lets you connect to an existing XEmacs process and display
- a TTY frame on the current TTY connection, and commands
- `make-frame-on-display' (with a corresponding menubar entry)
- and `make-frame-on-tty' for more easily creating frames on
- new TTY or X connections.
-
- -- We have incorporated nearly all of the functionality of GNU Emacs
- 19.30 into XEmacs. This includes support for lazy-loaded
- byte code and documentation strings, improved paragraph filling,
- better support for margins within documents, v19 regular expression
- routines (including caching of compiled regexps), etc.
-
- -- In accordance with GNU Emacs 19.30, the following key binding
- changes have been made:
-
- C-x ESC -> C-x ESC ESC
- ESC ESC -> ESC :
- ESC ESC ESC is "abort anything" (keyboard-escape-quit).
-
- -- All major packages have been updated to their latest-released
- versions.
-
- -- XEmacs now gracefully handles a full colormap (such as typically
- results when running Netscape). The nearest available color
- is automatically substituted.
-
- -- Many bug fixes to the subprocess/PTY code, ps-print, menubar
- functions, `set-text-properties', DEC Alpha support, toolbar
- resizing (the "phantom VM toolbar" bug), and lots and lots
- of other things were made.
-
- -- The ncurses library (a replacement for curses, found especially
- under Linux) is supported, and will be automatically used
- if it can be found.
-
- -- You can now undo in the minibuffer.
-
- -- Surrogate minibuffers now work. These are also sometimes referred
- to as "global" minibuffers.
-
- -- font-lock has been merged with GNU Emacs 19.30, improved defaults
- have been added, and changes have been made to the way it is
- configured.
-
- -- Many, many modes have menubar entries for them.
-
- -- `recover-session' lets you recover whatever files can be recovered
- after your XEmacs process has died unexpectedly.
-
- -- C-h k followed by a toolbar button press correctly reports
- the binding of the toolbar button.
-
- -- `function-key-map', `key-translation-map', and `keyboard-translate-table'
- are now correctly implemented.
-
- -- `show-message-log' (and its menubar entry under Edit) have been
- removed; instead use `view-lossage' (and its menubar entry under
- Help).
-
- -- There is a standard menubar entry for specifying which browser
- (Netscape, W3, Mosaic, etc.) to use when dispatching URL's
- in mail, Usenet news, etc.
-
- -- Improved native sound support under Linux.
-
- -- Lots of other things we forgot to mention.
-
-
-
- Significant Lisp-level changes:
- -------------------------------
-
- -- Many improvements to the E-Lisp documentation have been made;
- it should now be up-to-date and complete in nearly all cases.
-
- -- XEmacs has extensive documentation on its internals, for
- would-be C hackers.
-
- -- Common-Lisp support (the CL package) is now dumped standard
- into XEmacs. No more need for (require 'cl) or anything
- like that.
-
- -- Full support for extents and text properties over strings is
- provided.
-
- -- The extent properties `start-open', `end-open', `start-closed',
- and `end-closed' now work correctly w.r.t. text properties.
-
- -- The `face' property of extents and text properties can now
- be a list.
-
- -- The `mouse-face' property from GNU Emacs is now supported.
- It supersedes the `highlight' property.
-
- -- `enriched' and `facemenu' packages from GNU Emacs have been ported.
-
- -- New functions for easier creation of dialog boxes:
- `get-dialog-box-response', `message-box', and `message-or-box'.
-
- -- `function-min-args' and `function-max-args' allow you to determine
- the minimum and maximum allowed arguments for any type of
- function (i.e. subr, lambda expression, byte-compiled function, etc.).
-
- -- Some C-level support for doing E-Lisp profiling is provided.
- See `start-profiling', `stop-profiling', and
- `pretty-print-profiling-info'.
-
- -- `current-process-time' reports the user, system, and real times
- for the currently running XEmacs process.
-
- -- `next-window', `previous-window', `next-frame', `previous-frame',
- `other-window', `get-lru-window', etc. have an extra device
- argument that allows you to restrict which devices it includes
- (normally all devices). Some functions that incorrectly ignored
- frames on different devices (e.g. C-x 0) are fixed.
-
- -- new functions `run-hook-with-args-until-success',
- `run-hook-with-args-until-failure'.
-
- -- generalized facility for local vs. global hooks. See `make-local-hook',
- `add-hook'.
-
- -- New functions for querying the window tree: `frame-leftmost-window',
- `frame-rightmost-window', `window-first-hchild', `window-first-vchild',
- `window-next-child', `window-previous-child', and `window-parent'.
-
- -- Epoch support works. This gets you direct access to some X events
- and objects (e.g. properties and property-notify events).
-
- -- The multi-device support has been majorly revamped. There is now
- a new concept of "consoles" (devices grouped together under a
- common keyboard/mouse), console-local variables, and a generalized
- concept of device/console connection.
-
- -- `display-buffer' synched with GNU Emacs 19.30, giving you lots of
- wondrous cruft such as
- -- unsplittable frames
- -- pop-up-frames, pop-up-frame-function
- -- special-display-buffer-names, special-display-regexps,
- special-display-function
- -- same-window-buffer-names, same-window-regexps
-
- -- XEmacs has support for accessing DBM- and/or DB-format databases,
- provided that you have the appropriate libraries on your system.
-
- -- There is a new font style: "strikethru" fonts.
-
- -- New data type "weak list", which is a list with special
- garbage-collection properties, similar to weak hash tables.
-
- -- `set-face-parent' makes one face inherit all properties from another.
-
- -- The junky frame parameters mechanism has been revamped as
- frame properties, which a standard property-list interface.
-
- -- Lots and lots of functions for working with property lists have
- been added.
-
- -- New functions `push-window-configuration', `pop-window-configuration',
- `unpop-window-configuration' for maintain a stack of window
- configurations.
-
- -- Many fixups to the glyph code; icons and mouse pointers are now
- properly merged into the glyph mechanism.
-
- -- `set-specifier' works more sensibly, like `set-face-property'.
-
- -- Many new specifiers for individually controlling toolbar height/width
- and visibility and text cursor visibility.
-
- -- New face `text-cursor' controls the colors of the text cursor.
-
- -- Many new variables for turning on debug information about the
- inner workings of XEmacs.
-
- -- Hash tables can now compare their keys using `equal' or `eql'
- as well as `eq'.
-
- -- Other things too numerous to mention.
-
-
-
- Significant configuration/build changes:
- ----------------------------------------
-
- -- You can disable TTY support, toolbar support, scrollbar support,
- menubar support, and/or dialog box support at configure time
- to save memory.
-
- -- New configure option `--extra-verbose' shows the diagnostic
- output from feature testing; this should help track down
- problems with incorrect feature detection.
-
- -- `dont-have-xmu' is now `with-xmu', with the reversed sense.
- (It defaults to `yes'.)
-
- -- `with-mocklisp' lets you add Mocklisp support if you really
- need this.
-
- -- `with-term' for adding TERM support for Linux users.
-
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.12 and 19.13
- ============================================
-
- This is primarily a bug-fix release. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
- Hopefully only a few have been introduced. The most noteworthy bug
- fixes are:
-
- -- There should be no more problems connecting XEmacs to an X
- server over SLIP or other slow connections.
- -- Periodic crashes when using the Buffers menu should be gone.
- -- etags would sometimes erase the current buffer; it doesn't
- any more.
- -- XEmacs will correctly exit if the X server dies.
- -- uniconified frames are displayed properly under TVTWM.
- -- Breakage in `add-menu-item' / `add-menu-button' is fixed.
-
- The Motif menubar has _NOT_ been fixed for 19.13. You should use the
- Lucid menubar instead.
-
- Multi-device support should now be working properly. You can now open
- an X device after having started out on a TTY device.
-
- Background pixmaps now work. See `set-face-background-pixmap'.
-
- Echo area messages are now saved to a buffer, " *Message Log*". To
- see this buffer, use the command `show-message-log'. It is possible
- to filter the message which are actually included by modifying the
- variables `log-message-ignore-regexps' and `log-message-ignore-labels'.
-
- You can now control which warnings you want to see. See
- `display-warning-suppressed-classes' and friends.
-
- You can now set the default location of an "other window" from the
- Options menu.
-
- "Save Options" now saves the state of all faces.
-
- You can choose which file "Save Options" writes into; see
- `save-options-file'.
-
- XPM support is no longer required for the toolbar.
-
- The relocating allocator is now enabled by default whenever possible.
- This allows buffer memory to be returned to the system when no longer
- in use which helps keep XEmacs process size down.
-
- The ability to have captioned toolbars has been added. Currently only
- the default toolbar actually has a captioned version provided. A new
- specifier variable, `toolbar-buttons-captioned-p' controls whether the
- toolbar is captioned.
-
- A copy of the XEmacs FAQ is now included and is available through info.
-
- The on-line E-Lisp reference manual has been significantly updated.
-
- There is now audio support under Linux.
-
- Modifier keys can now be sticky. This is controlled by the variable
- `modifier-keys-are-sticky'.
-
- manual-entry should now work correctly under Irix with the penalty of
- a longer startup time the first time it is invoked. If you are having
- problems with this on another system try setting
- `Manual-use-subdirectory-list' to t.
-
- make-tty-device no longer automatically creates the first frame.
-
- Rectangular regions now work correctly.
-
- ediff no longer sets synchronize-minibuffers to t unless you first set
- ediff-synchronize-minibuffers
-
- keyboard-translate-table has been implemented. This means that the
- `enable-flow-control' command for dealing with TTY connections that
- filter out ^S and ^Q now works.
-
- You can now create frames that are initially unmapped and frames that
- are "transient for another frame", meaning that they behave more like
- dialog-box frames.
-
- Other E-Lisp changes:
-
- -- Specifier `menubar-visible-p' for controlling menubar visibility
- -- Local command hooks should be set using `local-pre-command-hook'
- and `local-post-command-hook' instead of making the global
- equivalents be buffer-local.
- -- `quit-char', `help-char', `meta-prefix-char' can be any key specifier
- instead of just an integer.
- -- new functions `add-async-timeout' and `disable-async-timeout'.
- These let you create asynchronous timeouts, which are like
- normal timeouts except that they're executed even during
- running Lisp code. Use this with care!
- -- `debug-on-error' and `stack-trace-on-error' now enter the debugger
- only when an *unhandled* error occurs. If you want the old
- behavior, use `debug-on-signal' and `stack-trace-on-signal'.
- -- \U, \L, \u, \l, \E recognized specially in `replace-match'.
- These are standard ex/perl commands for changing the case of
- replaced text.
- -- New function event-matches-key-specifier-p. This provides
- a clean way of comparing keypress events with key specifiers
- such as 65, (shift home), etc. without having to resort
- to ugly `character-to-event' / `event-to-character' hacks.
- -- New function `add-to-list'
- -- New Common-Lisp functions `some', `every', `notevery', `notany',
- `adjoin', `union', `intersection', `set-difference',
- `set-exclusive-or', `subsetp'
- -- `remove-face-property' provides a clean way of removing a
- face property.
-
- Many of the Emacs Lisp packages have been updated. Some of the new
- Emacs Lisp packages ---
-
- ada-mode: major mode for editing Ada source
-
- arc-mode: simple editing of archives
-
- auto-show-mode: automatically scrolls horizontally to keep point on-screen
-
- completion: dynamic word completion mode
-
- dabbrev: the dynamic abbrev package has been rewritten and is much
- more powerful -- e.g. it searches in other buffers as well
- as the current one
-
- easymenu: menu support package
-
- live-icon: makes frame icons represent the current frame contents
-
- mailcrypt 3.2: mail encryption with PGP; included but v2.4 is still
- the default
-
- two-column: for editing two-column text
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.11 and 19.12
- ============================================
-
- This is a huge new release. Almost every aspect of XEmacs has been changed
- at least somewhat. The highlights are:
-
- -- TTY support (includes face support)
- -- new redisplay engine; should be faster, less buggy, and more powerful
- -- terminology change from "screen" to "frame"
- -- built-in toolbar
- -- toolbar support added to many packages
- -- multiple device support (still in beta; improvements to come in
- 19.13)
- -- Purify used to ensure that there are no memory leaks or memory corruption
- problems
- -- horizontal and vertical scrollbars in all windows
- -- new Lucid (i.e. look-alike Motif) scrollbar widget
- -- stay-up menus in the Lucid (look-alike Motif) menubar widget
- -- 3-d modeline
- -- new extents engine; should be faster, less buggy, and more powerful
- -- much more powerful control over faces
- -- expanded menubar
- -- more work on synching with GNU Emacs 19.28
- -- new packages: Hyperbole, OOBR (object browser), hm--html-menus, viper,
- lazy-lock.el, ksh-mode.el, rsz-minibuf.el
- -- package updates for all major packages
- -- dynodump package for Solaris: provides proper undumping and portable
- binaries across different OS versions and machine types
- -- Greatly expanded concept of "glyphs" (pixmaps etc. in a buffer)
- -- built-in support for displaying X-Faces, if the X-Face library is
- available
- -- built-in support for SOCKS if the SOCKS library is available
- -- graceful behavior when the colormap is full (e.g. Netscape ate
- all the colors)
- -- built-in MD5 (secure hashing function) support
-
-
- More specific information:
-
- *** TTY Support
- ---------------
-
- The long-awaited TTY support is now available. XEmacs will start up
- in TTY mode (using the tty you started XEmacs from) if the DISPLAY
- environment variable is not set or if you use the `-nw' option.
-
- Faces are available on TTY's. For a demonstration, try editing a C
- file and turning on font-lock-mode.
-
- You can also connect to additional TTY's using `make-tty-device',
- whether your first frame was a TTY or an X window. This ability is
- not yet completely finished.
-
- The full event-loop capabilities (processes, timeouts, etc.) are
- available on TTY's.
-
-
-
- *** New Redisplay Engine
- ------------------------
-
- The redisplay engine has been rewritten to improve its efficiency and
- to increase its functionality. It should also be significantly more
- bug-free than the previous redisplay engine.
-
- A line that is not big enough to display at the bottom of the window
- will normally be clipped (so that it is partially visible) rather than
- not displayed at all. The variable `pixel-vertical-clip-threshold'
- can be used to control the minimum space that must be available for a
- line to be clipped rather than not displayed at all.
-
- Tabs are displayed in such a way that things line up fairly well even
- in the presence of variable-width fonts and/or lines with
- multiply-sized fonts.
-
- Display tables are implemented, through the specifier variable
- `current-display-table'. They can be buffer-local, window-local,
- frame-local, or device-local. See below for info about specifiers.
-
-
-
- *** Toolbar
- -----------
-
- There is now built-in support for a toolbar. A sample toolbar is
- visible by default at the top of the frame. Four separate toolbars
- can be configured (at the top, bottom, left, and right of the frame).
- The toolbar specification is similar to the menubar specification.
- The up, down, and disabled glyphs of a toolbar button can be
- separately controlled. Explanatory text can be echoed in the echo
- area when the mouse passes over a toolbar button. The size, contents,
- and visibility of the various toolbars can be controlled on a
- per-buffer, per-window, per-frame, and per-device basis through the
- use of specifiers. See the chapter on toolbars in the Lisp Reference
- Manual (included with XEmacs) for more information.
-
- The toolbar color and shadow thicknesses are currently controlled only
- through `modify-frame-parameters' and through X resources. We are
- planning on making these controllable through specifiers as well. (Our
- hope is to make `modify-frame-parameters' obsolete, as it is a clunky
- and not very powerful mechanism.)
-
- Info, GNUS, VM, W3, and various other packages include custom toolbars
- with them.
-
-
-
- *** Menubar
- -----------
-
- Stay-up menus are implemented in the look-alike Motif menubar.
-
- The default menubar has been expanded to include most commonly-used
- functions in XEmacs.
-
- The options menu has been greatly expanded to include many more
- options.
-
- The menubar specification format has been greatly expanded. Per-menu
- activation hooks can be specified through the :filter keyword (thus
- obsoleting `activate-menubar-hook'); this allows for fast response
- time when you have a large and complex menu. You can dynamically
- control whether menu items are present through the :included and
- :config keywords. (The latter keyword implements a simple menubar
- configuration scheme, in conjunction with the variable
- `menubar-configuration'.) Many different menu-item separators (single
- or double line; solid or dashed; flat, etched-in, or etched-out) are
- available. See the chapter on menus in the Lisp Reference Manual for
- more information about all of this.
-
- New functions `add-submenu' and `add-menu-button' are available.
- These supersede the older `add-menu' and `add-menu-item' functions,
- and provide a more powerful and consistent interface.
-
- New convenience functions for popping up the part or all of the
- menubar in a pop-up menu are available: `popup-menubar-menu' and
- `popup-buffer-menu'.
-
- Menus are now incrementally constructed greatly improving menubar
- response time.
-
-
-
- *** Scrollbars
- --------------
-
- A look-alike Motif scrollbar is now included with XEmacs. No longer
- will you have to suffer with ugly Athena scrollbars.
-
- Windows can now have horizontal scrollbars. Normally they are visible
- when the window's buffer is set to truncate lines rather than wrap
- them (e.g. `(setq truncate-lines t)').
-
- All windows, not only the right-most ones, can have vertical
- scrollbars.
-
- The functions to change a scrollbar's width have been superseded by
- the specifier variables `scrollbar-width' and `scrollbar-height'.
- This allows their values to be controlled on a buffer-local,
- window-local, frame-local, and device-local basis. See below.
-
- The scrollbars interact better with the event loop (for example, you
- can type `C-h k', do a scrollbar action, and see a description of this
- scrollbar action printed as if you had pressed a key sequence or
- selected a menu item).
-
- The scrollbar behavior can be reprogrammed, by advising the
- `scrollbar-*' functions.
-
-
-
- *** Key Bindings
- ----------------
-
- The oft-used function `goto-line' now has its own binding: M-g.
-
- New bindings are available for scrolling the "other" window: M-next,
- M-prior, M-home, M-end. (On many keyboards, `next' and `prior'
- labelled `PgUp' and `PgDn'.)
-
- You can reactivate a deactivated Zmacs region, without having any
- other effects, with the binding M-C-z.
-
- The bindings `M-u', `M-l', and `M-c' now work on the region (if a
- region is active) or work on a word, as before.
-
- Shift-Control-G forces a "critical quit", which drops immediately into
- the debugger; see below.
-
-
-
- *** Modeline
- ------------
-
- The modeline can now have a 3-d look; this is enabled by default. The
- specifier variable `modeline-shadow-thickness' controls the size.
-
- The modeline can now be turned off on a per-buffer, per-window,
- per-frame, or per-device basis. The specifier variable
- `has-modeline-p' controls whether the modeline is visible. See below
- for details about the vastly powerful specifier mechanism.
-
- The modeline functions and variables have been renamed to be
- `*-modeline-*' rather than `*-mode-line-*'. Aliases are provided for
- all the old names.
-
- Variable width fonts now work correctly when used in the modeline.
-
-
-
- *** Minibuffer, Echo Area
- -------------------------
-
- The minibuffer is no longer constrained to be one line high. The
- package rsz-minibuf.el is included to automatically resize the
- minibuffer when its contents are too big; enable this with
- `resize-minibuffer-mode'.
-
- The echo area is now a true buffer, called " *Echo Area*". This
- allows you to customize the echo area behavior through
- before-change-functions and after-change-functions.
-
-
-
- *** Specifiers
- --------------
-
- XEmacs has a new concept called "specifiers", used to configure most
- display options (toolbar size and contents, scrollbar size, face
- properties, modeline visibility and shadow-thickness, glyphs, display
- tables, etc.). We are planning on converting all display
- characteristics to use specifiers, and obsoleting the clunky functions
- `frame-parameters' and `modify-frame-parameters'. Specifically:
-
- -- You can specify values (called "instantiators") for particular
- "locales" (i.e. buffers, windows, frames, devices, or a global value).
- When determining what the actual value (or "instance") of a specifier
- is, the specifications that are provided are searched from most
- specific (i.e. buffer-local) to most general (i.e. global), looking
- for a matching one.
-
- -- You can specify multiple instantiators for a particular locale.
- For example, when specifying what the foreground color of a face
- is in a particular buffer, you could specify two instantiators:
- "dark sea green" and "green". The color would then be dark sea
- green on devices that recognize that color, and green on other
- devices. You have effectively provided a fallback value to make
- sure you get reasonable behavior on all devices.
-
- -- You can add one or more tags to an instantiator, where a tag
- is a symbol that has been previously registered with XEmacs.
- This allows you to identify your instantiators for later
- removal in a way that won't interfere with other applications
- using the same specifier. Furthermore, particular tags can
- be restricted to match only particular sorts of devices.
- Any tagged instantiator will be ignored if the device over which
- it is being instanced does not match any of its tags. This
- allows you, for example, to restrict an instantiator to a
- particular device type (X or TTY) and/or class (color, grayscale,
- or mono). (You might want to specify, for example, that a
- particular face is displayed in green on color devices and is
- underlined on mono devices.)
-
- -- A full API is provided for manipulating specifiers, and full
- documentation is provided in the Lisp Reference Manual.
-
-
-
- *** Basic Lisp Stuff
- --------------------
-
- Common-Lisp backquote syntax is recognized. For example, the old
- expression
-
- (` (a b (, c)))
-
- can now be written
-
- `(a b ,c)
-
- The old backquote syntax is still accepted.
-
- The new function `type-of' returns a symbol describing the type of a
- Lisp object (`integer', `string', `symbol', etc.)
-
- Symbols beginning with a colon (called "keywords") are treated
- specially in that they are automatically made self-evaluating when
- they are interned into `obarray'. The new function `keywordp' returns
- whether a symbol begins with a colon.
-
- `get', `put', and `remprop' have been generalized to allow you to set
- and retrieve properties on many different kinds of objects: symbols,
- strings, faces, glyphs, and extents (for extents, however, this is not
- yet implemented). They are joined by a new function `object-props'
- that returns all of the properties that have been set on an object.
-
- New functions `plists-eq' and `plists-equal' are provided for
- comparing property lists (a property list is an alternating list
- of keys and values).
-
- The Common-Lisp functions `caar', `cadr', `cdar', `cddr', `caaar', etc.
- (up to four a's and/or d's), `first', `second', `third', etc. (up to
- `tenth'), `last', `rest', and `endp' have been added, for more
- convenient manipulation of lists.
-
- New function `mapvector' maps over a sequence and returns a vector
- of the results, analogous to `mapcar'.
-
- New functions `rassoc', `remassoc', `remassq', `remrassoc', and
- `remrassq' are provided for working with alists.
-
- New functions `defvaralias', `variable-alias' and `indirect-variable'
- are provided for creating variable aliases.
-
- Strings have a modified-tick that is bumped every time a string
- is modified in-place with `aset' or `fillarray'. This is retrieved
- with the new function `string-modified-tick'.
-
- New macro `push' destructively adds an element to the beginning of a
- list. New macro `pop' destructively removes and returns the first
- element of a list.
-
-
-
- *** Buffers
- -----------
-
- Most functions that operate on buffer text now take an optional BUFFER
- argument, specifying which buffer they operate on. (Previously, they
- always operated on the current buffer.)
-
- The new function `transpose-regions' is provided, ported from GNU
- Emacs.
-
- The new function `save-current-buffer' works like `save-excursion'
- but only saves the current buffer, not the location of point in
- that buffer.
-
-
-
- *** Devices
- -----------
-
- XEmacs has a new concept of "device", which is represents a particular
- X display or TTY connection. `make-frame' has a new, optional device
- parameter that allows you to specify which device the frame is to be
- created on.
-
- Multiple simultaneous TTY and/or X connections may be made. The
- specifier mechanism provides reasonable behavior of glyphs, faces,
- etc. over heterogeneous device types and over devices whose individual
- capabilities may vary.
-
- There is also a device type called "stream" that represents a STDIO
- device that has no redisplay or cursor-motion capabilities, such as
- the "glass terminal" that XEmacs uses when it is run noninteractively.
- There is not all that much you can do with stream devices currently;
- please let us know if there are good uses you can think of for this
- capability. (For example, log files?)
-
- A new device API is provided. Functions are provided such as
- `device-name' (the name of the device, which generally is based on the
- X display or TTY file name), `device-type' (X, TTY, or stream),
- `device-class' (color, grayscale, or mono), etc. See the Lisp
- Reference Manual.
-
- Many functions have been extended to contain an additional, optional
- device argument, where such an extension makes sense. In general, if
- the argument is omitted, it is equivalent to specifying
- `(selected-device)'.
-
- Many previous functions and variables are obsoleted in favor of the
- device API. For example, `window-system' is obsoleted by
- `device-type', and `x-color-display-p' and friends are obsoleted by
- `device-class'.
-
- ** NOTE **: The obsolete variable `window-system' is going
- to be deleted soon, probably in 19.14. Please correct all
- your code to use `device-type'.
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The function `x-display-visual-class'
- returns different values from previous versions of XEmacs.
-
-
-
- *** Errors, Warnings, C-g
- -------------------------
-
- There is a new warnings system implemented. Many warnings that were
- formerly displayed in various ad-hoc ways (e.g. warnings about screwy
- modifier mappings, messages about failures handling the mouse cursor
- and errors in a gc-hook) have been regularized through this system.
- The new function `warn' displays a warning before the next redisplay
- (the actually display of the warning messages is accomplished through
- `display-warning-buffer'). Both `warn' and `display-warning-buffer'
- are Lisp functions (the C code calls out to them as necessary), and
- thus you can customize the warning system.
-
- Under an X display, you can press Shift-Control-G to force a "critical
- quit". This will immediately display a backtrace and pop you into the
- debugger, regardless of the settings of `inhibit-quit' and
- `debug-on-quit'.
-
- C-g now works properly even on systems that don't implement SIGIO or
- for which SIGIO is broken (e.g. IRIX 5.3 and older versions of Linux).
- In addition, the SIGIO support has been fixed for many systems on
- which it didn't always work properly before (e.g. HPUX and Solaris).
-
-
-
- *** Events
- ----------
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: Many event functions have been changed to
- accept and return windows instead of frames.
-
- New function: `event-live-p', specifying whether `deallocate-event'
- has been called on an event.
-
- The "menu event" type has been renamed to "misc-user event", and
- encompasses scrollbar events as well as menu events. We are planning
- on making it also encompass toolbar events in a future release.
-
- New functions are provided for determining whether an particular
- sections of a frame: `event-over-border-p', `event-over-glyph-p',
- `event-over-modeline-p', `event-over-text-area-p', and
- `event-over-toolbar-p'. The old, kludgey methods of checking the
- window-height, the internal-border-width, etc. are unreliable and
- should not be used.
-
- New functions `event-window-x-pixel' and `event-window-y-pixel' are
- provided for determining where in a particular window an event
- happened.
-
- New functions `event-glyph-x-pixel' and `event-glyph-y-pixel' are
- provided for determining where in a particular glyph an event
- happened.
-
- New function `event-closest-point', which returns the closest buffer
- position to the event even if the event did not occur over any text.
-
- New variable `unread-command-events', superseding the older
- `unread-command-event'.
-
- Many event-loop bugs have been fixed.
-
-
-
- *** Extents
- -----------
-
- The extent code has been largely rewritten. It should be faster and
- more reliable.
-
- The text-property implementation has been greatly improved.
-
- Some new extent primitives are provided to return the position of the
- next or previous property change in a buffer.
-
- Extents can now have a parent specified; then all of its properties
- (except for the buffer it's in and its position in that buffer) come
- from that extent. Hierarchies of such extents can be created.
-
- Extents now have a `detachable' property that controls what happens
- (they either get detached or shrink down to zero-length) when their
- text is deleted. Previously, such extents would always be detached.
-
- The `invisible' property on extents now works.
-
- `map-extents' has three additional parameters that provide more
- control over which extents are mapped.
-
- `map-extents' deals better with changes made to extents in the
- buffer being mapped over.
-
- A new function `mapcar-extents' (an alternative to `map-extents') has
- been provided and should be easier to use than `map-extents'.
-
-
-
- *** Faces
- ---------
-
- Faces can now be buffer-local, window-local, and device-local as well
- as frame-local, and can be further restricted to a particular device
- type or class. The way in which faces can be controlled is now based
- on the general and powerful specifier mechanism; see above.
-
- The new function `set-face-property' generalizes `set-face-font',
- `set-face-foreground', etc. and takes many new optional arguments, in
- accordance with the new specifier mechanism.
-
- The new functions `face-property' and `face-property-instance'
- generalize `face-font', `face-foreground', etc. and take many new
- optional arguments, in accordance with the new specifier mechanism.
- (`face-property' returns the value, if any, that was specified for a
- particular locale, and `face-property-instance' returns the actual
- value that will be used for display. See the section on specifiers.)
-
- The functions `face-font', `face-foreground', `face-background',
- `set-face-font', `set-face-foreground', `set-face-background',
- etc. are now convenience functions, trivially implemented using
- `face-property' and `set-face-property' and take new optional
- arguments in accordance with those functions. New convenience
- functions `face-font-instance', `face-foreground-instance',
- `face-background-instance', etc. are provided and are trivially
- implemented using `face-property-instance'.
-
- Inheritance of face properties can now be specified. Each individual
- face property can inherit differently from other properties, or not
- inherit at all.
-
- You can set user-defined properties on faces using
- `set-face-property'.
-
- You can create "temporary" faces, which are faces that disappear
- when they are no longer in use. This is as opposed to normal
- faces, which stay around forever.
-
- The function `make-face' takes a new optional argument specifying
- whether a face should be permanent or temporary, and returns the
- actual face object rather than the face symbol, as in previous
- versions of XEmacs.
-
- The function `face-list' takes a new optional argument specifying
- whether permanent, temporary, or both kinds of faces should be
- returned.
-
- Faces have new TTY-specific properties: `highlight', `reverse',
- `alternate', `blinking', and `dim'.
-
- Redisplay is smarter about dealing with face changes: changes to a
- particular face no longer cause all frames to be cleared and
- redisplayed.
-
- The Edit-Faces package is provided for interactively changing faces.
- A menu item on the options menu is provided for this.
-
- New functions are provided for retrieving the ascent, descent, height,
- and width of a character in a particular face.
-
-
-
- *** Fonts, Colors
- -----------------
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The old "font" and "pixel" objects are gone.
- In place are new objects "font specifier", "font instance", "color
- specifier", and "color instance". Functions `font-name', `pixel-name'
- (an obsolete alias for `color-name'), etc. are now convenience
- functions for working with font and color specifiers. Old code that
- is not too sophisticated about working with font and pixel objects may
- still work, though. (For example, the idiom `(font-name (face-font
- 'default))' still works.)
-
- You can now extract the RGB components of a color-instance object
- (similar to the old pixel object) with the function
- `color-instance-rgb-components'. There is also a convenience function
- `color-rgb-components' for working with color specifiers.
-
- If there are no more colors available in the colormap, the nearest
- existing color will be used when allocating a new color.
-
-
-
- *** Frames
- ----------
-
- What used to be called "screens" are now called "frames", for clarity
- and consistency with GNU Emacs. Aliases are provided for all the old
- screen functions and variables, to avoid introducing a huge E-Lisp
- incompatibility.
-
- The frame code has been merged with GNU Emacs 19.28, providing
- improved functionality for many functions.
-
-
-
- *** Glyphs, Images, and Pixmaps
- -------------------------------
-
- Glyphs (used in various places, i.e. as begin-glyphs and end-glyphs
- attached to extents and appearing in a buffer or in marginal
- annotations; as the truncator and continuor glyphs marking line wrap
- or truncation; as an overlay at the beginning of a line; as the
- displayable element in a toolbar button; etc.) can now be
- buffer-local, window-local, frame-local, and device-local, and can be
- further restricted to a particular device type or class. The way in
- which faces can be controlled is now based on the general and powerful
- specifier mechanism; see above.
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The glyph and pixmap API has been completely
- overhauled. A new Lisp object "glyph" is provided and should be used
- where the old "pixmap" object would have been used. The pixmap object
- exists no longer. There are also new Lisp objects "image specifier"
- and "image instance" (an image-instance is the closest equivalent to
- what a pixmap object was). More work on glyphs and images is slated
- for 19.13. The glyph and image docs in the Lisp Reference Manual are
- incomplete and will be finished in 19.13.
-
- The new function `set-glyph-property' allows setting of all the
- glyph properties (`baseline', `contrib-p', etc.). Convenience
- functions for particular properties are also provided, just like
- for faces.
-
- You can set user-defined properties on glyphs using the new function
- `set-glyph-property'.
-
- When displaying pixmaps, existing, closest-matching colors will be
- used if the colormap is full.
-
- If the compface library is compiled into XEmacs, there is built-in
- support for displaying X-Face bitmaps. (These are typically small
- pictures of people's faces, included in a mail message through the
- X-Face: header.) VM and highlight-headers will automatically use the
- built-in X-Face support if it is available.
-
- Annotations in the right margin (as well as the left margin) are now
- implemented. The left and right margin width functions have been
- superseded by the specifier variables `left-margin-width' and
- `right-margin-width', allowing much more flexible control through the
- specifier mechanism.
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The variable `use-left-overflow',
- for controlling annotations in the left margin, is now a specifier
- variable instead of a buffer-local variable. (There is also a new
- variable `use-right-overflow', that is complementary.)
-
-
-
- *** Hashing
- -----------
-
- Two new types of weak hashtables can be created: key-weak and
- value-weak. In a key-weak hashtable, an entry remains around
- if its key is referenced elsewhere, regardless of whether this
- is also the case for the value. Value-weak hashtables are
- complementary. (This is as opposed to the traditional weak
- hashtables, where an entry remains around only if both the
- key and value are referenced elsewhere.) New functions
- `make-key-weak-hashtable' and `make-value-weak-hashtable'
- are provided for creating these hashtables.
-
- The new function `md5' is provided for performing an MD5
- hash of an object. MD5 is a secure message digest algorithm
- developed by RSA, inc.
-
-
-
- *** Keymaps
- -----------
-
- The GNU Emacs concept of `function-key-map' is now partially
- implemented. This allows conversion of function-key escape sequences
- such as `ESC [ 1 1 ~' into an equivalent human-readable keysym such as
- `F1'. This work will be completed in 19.14. The function-key map is
- device-local and controllable through the functions
- `device-function-key-map' and `set-device-function-key-map'.
-
- `where-is-internal' now correctly searches minor-mode keymaps,
- extent-local keymaps, etc. As a side effect of this, menu items will
- now correctly show the keyboard equivalent for commands that are
- available through a minor-mode keymap, extent-local keymap, etc.
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The modifier key "Symbol" has
- been renamed to "Alt", for compatibility with the rest of the world.
- Keep in mind that on many keyboards, the key labelled "Alt" actually
- generates the "Meta" modifier. (On Sun keyboards, however, the key
- labelled "Alt" does indeed generate the "Alt" modifier, and the key
- labelled with a diamond generates the "Meta" modifier.)
-
-
-
- *** Mouse, Active Region
- ------------------------
-
- The mouse internals in mouse.el have been rewritten. Hooks have been
- provided for easier customization of mouse behavior. For example, you
- can now easily specify an action to be invoked on single-click
- (i.e. down-up without appreciable motion), double-click, drag-up, etc.
-
- Some code from GNU Emacs has been ported over, generalizing some of
- the X-specific mouse stuff.
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The function `set-mouse-position' accepts
- a window instead of a frame.
-
- New function `mouse-position' that obsoletes and is more powerful than
- `read-mouse-position'.
-
- New functions `mouse-pixel-position' and `set-mouse-pixel-position' for
- working with pixels instead of characters.
-
- The active (Zmacs) region is now highlighted using the `zmacs-region-face'
- instead of the `primary-selection-face'; this generalizes what used
- to be X-specific.
-
- New functions `region-active-p', `region-exists-p', and `activate-region'
- provide a uniform API for dealing with the region irrespective of
- whether the variable `zmacs-regions' is set.
-
- XEmacs is now a better X citizen with respect to the primary selection:
- it does not stomp on the primary selection quite so much. This makes
- things more manageable if you set `zmacs-regions' to nil.
-
-
-
- *** Processes
- -------------
-
- Various process race conditions and bugs have been fixed. Problems
- with process termination not getting noticed until much later (if at
- all) should be gone now, as well as problems with zombie processes
- under some systems.
-
- SOCKS support is now included. SOCKS is a package that allows hosts
- behind a firewall to gain full access to the Internet without
- requiring direct IP reachability.
-
-
-
- *** Windows
- -----------
-
- Windows 95 is still not out yet.
-
- ** INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE **: The functions `locate-window-from-coordinates'
- and `window-edges' have been eliminated. It no longer makes sense to
- work with windows in terms of character positions, because windows can
- (and often do) have many differently-sized fonts in them, because the
- 3-D modeline is not exactly one line high, etc.
-
- The new functions `window-pixel-edges', `window-highest-p',
- `window-lowest-p', `frame-highest-window', and `frame-lowest-window'
- are provided as substitutes for the above-mentioned, deleted
- functions.
-
- The function `window-end' now takes an optional GUARANTEE argument
- that will ensure that the value is actually correct as of the next
- redisplay.
-
- The window code has been merged with GNU Emacs 19.28, providing
- improved functionality for many functions.
-
-
-
- *** System-Specific Information
- -------------------------------
-
- Georg Nikodym's dynodump package is provided, for proper unexec()ing
- on Solaris systems. Executables built on Solaris 2.3 can now run on
- Solaris 2.4 without crashing; similarly with executables built on one
- type of Sun machine and run on another.
-
- AIX 4.x is supported.
-
- The NeXTstep operating system is supported in TTY mode (this is still
- in beta). There are plans to port XEmacs to the NeXTstep window
- system, but it may be awhile before this is complete.
-
- Problems with the `round' function causing arithmetic errors on HPUX 9
- have been fixed.
-
- You can now build XEmacs as an ELF executable on Linux systems that
- support ELF.
-
- Various other new system configurations are supported.
-
-
-
- *** Packages
- ------------
-
- Most packages have been updated to the latest available versions.
-
-
- Some of the new Emacs Lisp packages ---
-
- Hyperbole: the everyday information manager. Provides a Rolodex,
- allows links to be embedded in text, etc.
-
- OOBR: a sophisticated class browser for object-oriented languages.
-
- viper: a better VI emulator that allows Emacs and VI features
- to coexist happily.
-
- hm--html-menus: a sophisticated package for editing HTML code,
- from Heiko Muenkel.
-
- ksh-mode.el: for editing shell scripts.
-
- lazy-lock.el: a lazy, on-the-fly fontifier.
-
- paren.el: an improved matching paren highlighter
-
-
-
- Major changes to existing packages --
-
- VM: has a toolbar, many other nice features.
-
- w3: has a toolbar, many other nice features.
-
- ediff: provides three-way merging, has a better user interface.
-
- info: has a toolbar.
-
- highlight-headers.el: now highlights URL's and makes them active so
- that when clicked either Netscape 1.1 is called
- or Emacs W3 is run.
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.10 and 19.11
- ============================================
-
- The name has changed from "Lucid Emacs" to "XEmacs". Along with this is a
- new canonical ftp site: cs.uiuc.edu:/pub/xemacs.
-
- XEmacs now has its very own World Wide Web page! It contains a
- complete list of the FTP distribution sites, the most recent FAQ,
- pointers to Emacs Lisp packages not included with the distribution, and
- other useful stuff. Check it out at http://xemacs.cs.uiuc.edu/.
-
- A preliminary New Users Guide.
-
- cc-mode.el now provides the default C, C++ and Objective-C modes.
-
- The primary goal of this release is stability. Very few new features have
- been introduced but lots of bugs have been fixed. Many of the Emacs Lisp
- packages have been updated.
-
- Some of the new Emacs Lisp packages ---
-
- tcl-mode.el: major mode for editing TCL code
-
- fast-lock.el: saves and restores font-lock highlighting, greatly
- reducing the time necessary for loading a font-lock'ed
- file
-
- ps-print.el: prints buffers to Postscript printers preserving the
- buffer's bold and italic text attributes
-
- toolbar.el: provides a "fake" toolbar for use with XEmacs (an
- integrated one will be included with 19.12)
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.9 and 19.10
- ===========================================
-
- The GNU `configure' system is now used to build lemacs.
-
- The Emacs Manual and Emacs Lisp Reference Manual now document version 19.10.
- If you notice any errors, please let us know.
-
- When pixmaps are displayed in a buffer, they contribute to the line height -
- that is, if the glyph is taller than the rest of the text on the line, the
- line will be as tall as necessary to display the glyph.
-
- In addition to using arbitrary sound files as emacs beeps, one can control
- the pitch and duration of the standard X beep, on X servers which allow that
- (Note: most don't.)
-
- There is support for playing sounds on systems with NetAudio servers.
-
- Minor modes may have mode-specific key bindings; keymaps may have an arbitrary
- number of parent maps.
-
- Menus can have toggle and radio buttons in them.
-
- There is a font selection menu.
-
- Some default key bindings have changed to match FSF19; the new bindings are
-
- Screen-related commands:
- C-x 5 2 make-screen
- C-x 5 0 delete-screen
- C-x 5 b switch-to-buffer-other-screen
- C-x 5 f find-file-other-screen
- C-x 5 C-f find-file-other-screen
- C-x 5 m mail-other-screen
- C-x 5 o other-screen
- C-x 5 r find-file-read-only-other-screen
- Abbrev-related commands:
- C-x a l add-mode-abbrev
- C-x a C-a add-mode-abbrev
- C-x a g add-global-abbrev
- C-x a + add-mode-abbrev
- C-x a i g inverse-add-global-abbrev
- C-x a i l inverse-add-mode-abbrev
- C-x a - inverse-add-global-abbrev
- C-x a e expand-abbrev
- C-x a ' expand-abbrev
- Register-related commands:
- C-x r C-SPC point-to-register
- C-x r SPC point-to-register
- C-x r j jump-to-register
- C-x r s copy-to-register
- C-x r x copy-to-register
- C-x r i insert-register
- C-x r g insert-register
- C-x r r copy-rectangle-to-register
- C-x r c clear-rectangle
- C-x r k kill-rectangle
- C-x r y yank-rectangle
- C-x r o open-rectangle
- C-x r t string-rectangle
- C-x r w window-configuration-to-register
- Narrowing-related commands:
- C-x n n narrow-to-region
- C-x n w widen
- Other changes:
- C-x 3 split-window-horizontally (was undefined)
- C-x - shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer
- C-x + balance-windows
-
- The variable allow-deletion-of-last-visible-screen has been removed, since
- it was widely hated. You can now always delete the last visible screen if
- there are other iconified screens in existence.
-
- ToolTalk support is provided.
-
- An Emacs screen can be placed within an "external client widget" managed
- by another application. This allows an application to use an Emacs screen
- as its text pane rather than the standard Text widget that is provided
- with Motif or Athena.
-
- Additional compatibility with Epoch is provided (though this is not yet
- complete.)
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.8 and 19.9
- ==========================================
-
- Scrollbars! If you have Motif, these are real Motif scrollbars; otherwise,
- Athena scrollbars are used. They obey all the usual resources of their
- respective toolkits.
-
- There is now an implementation of dialog boxes based on the Athena
- widgets, as well as the existing Motif implementation.
-
- This release works with Motif 1.2 as well as 1.1. If you link with Motif,
- you do not also need to link with Athena.
-
- If you compile lwlib with both USE_MOTIF and USE_LUCID defined (which is the
- recommended configuration) then the Lucid menus will draw text using the Motif
- string-drawing library, instead of the Xlib one. The reason for this is that
- one can take advantage of the XmString facilities for including non-Latin1
- characters in resource specifications. However, this is a user-visible change
- in that, in this configuration, the menubar will use the "*fontList" resource
- in preference to the "*font" resource, if it is set.
-
- It's possible to make extents which are copied/pasted by kill and undo.
- There is an implementation of FSF19-style text properties based on this.
-
- There is a new variable, minibuffer-max-depth, which is intended to circumvent
- a common source of confusion among new Emacs users. Since, under a window
- system, it's easy to jump out of the minibuffer (by doing M-x, then getting
- distracted, and clicking elsewhere) many, many novice users have had the
- problem of having multiple minibuffers build up, even to the point of
- exhausting the lisp stack. So the default behavior is to disallow the
- minibuffer to ever be reinvoked while active; if you attempt to do so, you
- will be prompted about it.
-
- There is a new variable, teach-extended-commands-p, which if set, will cause
- `M-x' to remind you of any key bindings of the command you just invoked the
- "long way."
-
- There are menus in Dired, Tar, Comint, Compile, and Grep modes.
-
- There is a menu of window management commands on the right mouse button over
- the modelines.
-
- Popup menus now have titles at the top; this is controlled by the new
- variable `popup-menu-titles'.
-
- The `Find' key on Sun keyboards will search for the next (or previous)
- occurrence of the selected text, as in OpenWindows programs.
-
- The `timer' package has been renamed to `itimer' to avoid a conflict with
- a different package called `timer'.
-
- VM 5.40 is included.
-
- W3, the emacs interface to the World Wide Web, is included.
-
- Felix Lee's GNUS speedups have been installed, including his new version of
- nntp.el which makes GNUS efficiently utilize the NNTP XOVER command if
- available (which is much faster.)
-
- GNUS should also be much friendlier to new users: it starts up much faster,
- and doesn't (necessarily) subscribe you to every single newsgroup.
-
- The byte-compiler issues a new class of warnings: variables which are
- bound but not used. This is merely an advisory, and does not mean the
- code is incorrect; you can disable these warnings in the usual way with
- the `byte-compiler-options' macro.
-
- the `start-open' and `end-open' extent properties, for specifying whether
- characters inserted exactly at a boundary of an extent should go into the
- extent or out of it, now work correctly.
-
- The `extent-data' slot has been generalized/replaced with a property list,
- so it's easier to attach arbitrary data to extent objects.
-
- The `event-modifiers' and `event-modifier-bits' functions work on motion
- events as well as other mouse and keyboard events.
-
- Forms-mode uses fonts and read-only regions.
-
- The behavior of the -geometry command line option should be correct now.
-
- The `iconic' screen parameter works when passed to x-create-screen.
-
- The user's manual now documents Lucid Emacs 19.9.
-
- The relocating buffer allocator is turned on by default; this means that when
- buffers are killed, their storage will be returned to the operating system,
- and the size of the emacs process will shrink.
-
- CAVEAT: code which contains calls to certain `face' accessor functions will
- need to be recompiled by version 19.9 before it will work. The functions
- whose callers must be recompiled are: face-font, face-foreground,
- face-background, face-background-pixmap, and face-underline-p. The symptom
- of this problem is the error "Wrong type argument, arrayp, #<face ... >".
- The .elc files generated by version 19.9 will work in 19.6 and 19.8, but
- older .elc files which contain calls to these functions will not work in 19.9.
-
- Work In Progress:
-
- - We have been in the process of internationalizing Lucid Emacs. This code is
- ***not*** ready for general use yet. However, the code is included (and
- turned off by default) in this release.
-
- - If you define I18N2 at compile-time, then sorting/collation will be done
- according to the locale returned by setlocale().
-
- - If you define I18N3 at compile-time, then all messages printed by lemacs
- will be filtered through the gettext() library routine, to enable the use
- of locale-specific translation catalogues. The current implementation of
- this is quite dependent on Solaris 2, and has a very large impact on
- existing code, therefore we are going to be making major changes soon.
- (You'll notice calls to `gettext' and `GETTEXT' scattered around much of
- the lisp and C code; ignore it, this will be going away.)
-
- - If you define I18N4 at compile-time, then lemacs will internally use a
- wide representation of characters, enabling the use of large character
- sets such as Kanji. This code is very OS dependent: it requires X11R5,
- and several OS-supplied library routines for reading and writing wide
- characters (getwc(), putwc(), and a few others.) Performance is also a
- problem. This code is also scheduled for a major overhaul, with the
- intent of improving performance and portability.
-
- Our eventual goal is to merge with MULE, or at least provide the same base
- level of functionality. If you would like to help out with this, let us
- know.
-
- - Other work-in-progress includes Motif drag-and-drop support, ToolTalk
- support, and support for embedding an Emacs widget inside another
- application (where it can function as that other application's text-entry
- area). This code has not been extensively tested, and may (or may not)
- have portability problems, but it's there for the adventurous. Comments,
- suggestions, bug reports, and especially fixes are welcome. But have no
- expectations that this experimental code will work at all.
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.6 and 19.8
- ==========================================
-
- There were almost no differences between versions 19.6 and 19.7; version 19.7
- was a bug-fix release that was distributed with Energize 2.1.
-
- Lucid Emacs 19.8 represents the first stage of the Lucid Emacs/Epoch merger.
- The redisplay engine now in lemacs is an improved descendant of the Epoch
- redisplay. As a result, many bugs have been eliminated, and several disabled
- features have been re-enabled. Notably:
-
- Selective display (and outline-mode) work.
-
- Horizontally split windows work.
-
- The height of a line is the height of the tallest font displayed on that line;
- it is possible for a screen to display lines of differing heights. (Previously,
- the height of all lines was the height of the tallest font loaded.)
-
- There is lisp code to scale fonts up and down, for example, to load the next-
- taller version of a font.
-
- There is a new internal representation for lisp objects, giving emacs-lisp 28
- bit integers and a 28 bit address space, up from the previous maximum of 26.
- We expect eventually to increase this to 30 bit integers and a 32 bit address
- space, eliminating the need for DATA_SEG_BITS on some architectures. (On 64
- bit machines, add 32 to all of these numbers.)
-
- GC performance is improved.
-
- Various X objects (fonts, colors, cursors, pixmaps) are accessible as first-
- class lisp objects, with finalization.
-
- An alternate interface to embedding images in the text is provided, called
- "annotations." You may create an "annotation margin" which is whitespace at
- the left side of the screen that contains only annotations, not buffer text.
-
- When using XPM files, one can specify the values of logical color names to be
- used when loading the files.
-
- It is possible to resize windows by dragging their modelines up and down. More
- generally, it is possible to add bindings for mouse gestures on the modelines.
-
- There is support for playing sound files on HP machines.
-
- ILISP version 5.5 is included.
-
- The Common Lisp #' read syntax is supported (#' is to "function" as ' is to
- "quote".)
-
- The `active-p' slot of menu items is now evaluated, so one can put arbitrary
- lisp code in a menu to decide whether that item should be selectable, rather
- than doing this with an `activate-menubar-hook'.
-
- The X resource hierarchy has changed slightly, to be more consistent. It used
- to be
- argv[0] SCREEN-NAME pane screen
- ApplicationShell EmacsShell Paned EmacsFrame
-
- now it is
-
- argv[0] shell pane SCREEN-NAME
- ApplicationShell EmacsShell Paned EmacsFrame
-
- The Lucid Emacs sources have been largely merged with FSF version 19; this
- means that the lisp library contains the most recent releases of various
- packages, and many new features of FSF 19 have been incorporated.
-
- Because of this, the lemacs sources should also be substantially more portable.
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.4 and 19.6
- ==========================================
-
- There were almost no differences between versions 19.4 and 19.5; we fixed
- a few minor bugs and repacked 19.4 as 19.5 for a CD-ROM that we gave away
- as a trade show promotion.
-
- The primary goal of the 19.6 release is stability, rather than improved
- functionality, so there aren't many user-visible changes. The most notable
- changes are:
-
- - The -geometry command-line option now correctly overrides geometry
- specifications in the resource database.
- - The `width' and `height' screen-parameters work.
- - Font-lock-mode considers the comment start and end characters to be
- a part of the comment.
- - The lhilit package has been removed. Use font-lock-mode instead.
- - vm-isearch has been fixed to work with isearch-mode.
- - new versions of ispell and calendar.
- - sccs.el has menus.
-
- Lots of bugs were fixed, including the problem that lemacs occasionally
- grabbed the keyboard focus.
-
- Also, as of Lucid Emacs 19.6 and Energize 2.0 (shipping now) it is possible
- to compile the public release of Lucid Emacs with support for Energize; so
- now Energize users will be able to build their own Energize-aware versions
- of lemacs, and will be able to use newer versions of lemacs as they are
- released to the net. (Of course, this is not behavior covered by your
- Energize support contract; you do it at your own risk.)
-
- I have not incorporated all portability patches that I have been sent since
- 19.4; I will try to get to them soon. However, if you need to make any
- changes to lemacs to get it to compile on your system, it would be quite
- helpful if you would send me context diffs (diff -c) against version 19.6.
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.3 and 19.4
- ==========================================
-
- Prototypes have been added for all functions. Emacs compiles in the strict
- ANSI modes of lcc and gcc, so portability should be vastly improved.
-
- Many many many many core leaks have been plugged, especially in screen
- creation and deletion.
-
- The float support reworked to be more portable and ANSI conformant. This
- resulted in these new configuration parameters: HAVE_INVERSE_HYPERBOLIC,
- HAVE_CBRT, HAVE_RINT, FLOAT_CHECK_ERRNO, FLOAT_CATCH_SIGILL,
- FLOAT_CHECK_DOMAIN. Let us know if you had to change the defaults on your
- architecture.
-
- The SunOS unexec has been rewritten, and now works with either static or
- dynamic libraries, depending on whether -Bstatic or -Bdynamic were specified
- at link-time.
-
- Small (character-sized) bitmaps can be mixed in with buffer text via the new
- functions set-extent-begin-glyph and set-extent-end-glyph. (This is actually
- a piece of functionality that Energize has been using for a while, but we've
- just gotten around to making it possible to use it without Energize. See how
- nice we are? Go buy our product.)
-
- If compiled with Motif support, one can pop up dialog boxes from emacs lisp.
- We encourage someone to contribute Athena an version of this code; it
- shouldn't be much work.
-
- If dialog boxes are available, then y-or-n-p and yes-or-no-p use dialog boxes
- instead of the minibuffer if invoked as a result of a command that was
- executed from a menu instead of from the keyboard.
-
- Multiple screen support works better; check out doc of get-screen-for-buffer.
-
- The default binding of backspace is the same as delete. (C-h is still help.)
-
- A middle click while the minibuffer is active does completion if you click on
- a highlighted completion, otherwise it executes the global binding of button2.
-
- New versions of Barry Warsaw's c++-mode and syntax.c. Font-lock-mode works
- with C++ mode now.
-
- The semantics of activate-menubar-hook has changed; the functions are called
- with no arguments now.
-
- `truename' no longer hacks the automounter; use directory-abbrev-alist instead.
-
- Most minibuffer handling has been reimplemented in emacs-lisp.
-
- There is now a builtin minibuffer history mechanism which replaces gmhist.
-
-
- ** Major Differences Between 19.2 and 19.3
- ==========================================
-
- The ISO characters have correct case and syntax tables now, so the word-motion
- and case-converting commands work sensibly on them.
-
- If you set ctl-arrow to an integer, you can control exactly which characters
- are printable. (There will be a less crufty way to do this eventually.)
-
- Menubars can now be buffer local; the function set-screen-menubar no longer
- exists. Look at GNUS and VM for examples of how to do this, or read
- menubar.el.
-
- When emacs is reading from the minibuffer with completions, any completions
- which are visible on the screen will highlight when the mouse moves over them;
- clicking middle on a completion is the same as typing it at the minibuffer.
- Some implications of this: The *Completions* buffer is always mousable. If
- you're using the completion feature of find-tag, your source code will be
- mousable when you type M-. Dired buffers will be mousable as soon as you
- type ^X^F. And so on.
-
- The old isearch code has been replaced with a descendant of Dan LaLiberte's
- excellent isearch-mode; it is more customizable, and generally less bogus.
- You can search for "composed" characters. There are new commands, too; see
- the doc for ^S, or the NEWS file.
-
- A patched GNUS 3.14 is included.
-
- The user's manual now documents Lucid Emacs 19.3.
-
- A few more modes have mouse and menu support.
-
- The startup code should be a little more robust, and give you more reasonable
- error messages when things aren't installed quite right (instead of the
- ubiquitous "cannot open DISPLAY"...)
-
- Subdirectories of the lisp directory whose names begin with a hyphen or dot
- are not automatically added to the load-path, so you can use this to avoid
- accidentally inflicting experimental software on your users.
-
- I've tried to incorporate all of the portability patches that were sent to
- me; I tried to solve some of the problems in different ways than the
- patches did, so let me know if I missed something.
-
- Some systems will need to define NEED_STRDUP, NEED_REALPATH, HAVE_DREM, or
- HAVE_REMAINDER in config.h. Really this should be done in the appropriate
- s- or m- files, but I don't know which systems need these and which don't.
- If yours does, let me know which file it should be in.
-
- Check out these new packages:
-
- blink-paren.el: causes the matching parenthesis to flash on and off whenever
- the cursor is sitting on a paren-syntax character.
-
- pending-del.el: Certain commands implicitly delete the highlighted region:
- Typing a character when there is a highlighted region replaces
- that region with the typed character.
-
- font-lock.el: A code-highlighting package, driven off of syntax tables, so
- that it understands block comments, strings, etc. The
- insertion hook is used to fontify text as you type it in.
-
- shell-font.el: Displays your shell-buffer prompt in boldface.
-
- * The History of XEmacs
- =======================
-
- This product is an extension of GNU Emacs, previously known to some as
- "Lucid Emacs" or "ERA". It was initially based on an early version of Emacs
- Version 19 from the Free Software Foundation and has since been kept
- up-to-date with recent versions of that product. It stems from a
- collaboration of Lucid, Inc. with SunSoft DevPro (a division of Sun
- Microsystems, Inc.; formerly called SunPro) and the University of Illinois.
-
- NOTE: Lucid, Inc. is currently out of business but development on XEmacs
- continues strong. Recently, Amdahl Corporation and INS Engineering have
- both contributed significantly to the development of XEmacs.
-
-
- * What's Different?
- ===================
-
-
- ** Differences between XEmacs and GNU Emacs 19
- ==================================================
- In XEmacs 20, characters are first-class objects. Characters can be
- converted to integers, but are not integers. FSF 19, XEmacs 19, and Mule
- represent them as integers.
-
- In XEmacs, events are first-class objects. FSF 19 represents them as
- integers, which obscures the differences between a key gesture and the
- ancient ASCII code used to represent a particular overlapping subset of them.
-
- In XEmacs, keymaps are first-class opaque objects. FSF 19 represents them as
- complicated combinations of association lists and vectors. If you use the
- advertised functional interface to manipulation of keymaps, the same code
- will work in XEmacs, Emacs 18, and GNU Emacs 19; if your code depends
- on the underlying implementation of keymaps, it will not.
-
- XEmacs uses "extents" to represent all non-textual aspects of buffers;
- FSF 19 uses two distinct objects, "text properties" and "overlays",
- which divide up the functionality between them. Extents are a
- superset of the functionality of the two FSF data types. The full FSF
- 19 interface to text properties is supported in XEmacs (with extents
- being the underlying representation).
-
- Extents can be made to be copied into strings, and thus restored by kill
- and yank. Thus, one can specify this behavior on either "extents" or
- "text properties", whereas in FSF 19 text properties always have this
- behavior and overlays never do.
-
- Many more packages are provided standard with XEmacs than with FSF 19.
-
- Pixmaps of arbitrary size can be embedded in a buffer.
-
- Variable width fonts work.
-
- The height of a line is the height of the tallest font on that line, instead
- of all lines having the same height.
-
- XEmacs uses the MIT "Xt" toolkit instead of raw Xlib calls, which
- makes it be a more well-behaved X citizen (and also improves
- portability). A result of this is that it is possible to include
- other Xt "Widgets" in the XEmacs window. Also, XEmacs understands the
- standard Xt command-line arguments.
-
- XEmacs provides support for ToolTalk on systems that have it.
-
- XEmacs can ask questions using popup dialog boxes. Any command executed from
- a menu will ask yes/no questions with dialog boxes, while commands executed
- via the keyboard will use the minibuffer.
-
- XEmacs has a built-in toolbar. Four toolbars can actually be configured:
- top, bottom, left, and right toolbars.
-
- XEmacs has vertical and horizontal scrollbars. Unlike in FSF 19 (which
- provides a primitive form of vertical scrollbar), these are true toolkit
- scrollbars. A look-alike Motif scrollbar is provided for those who
- don't have Motif. (Even for those who do, the look-alike may be preferable
- as it is faster.)
-
- If you're running on a machine with audio hardware, you can specify sound
- files for XEmacs to play instead of the default X beep. See the documentation
- of the function load-sound-file and the variable sound-alist.
-
- An XEmacs frame can be placed within an "external client widget" managed by
- another application. This allows an application to use an XEmacs frame as its
- text pane rather than the standard Text widget that is provided with Motif or
- Athena. XEmacs supports Motif applications, generic Xt (e.g. Athena)
- applications, and raw Xlib applications.
-
- Here are some more specifics about the XEmacs implementation:
-
- *** The Input Model
- -------------------
-
- The fundamental unit of input is an "event" instead of a character. An
- event is a new data type that contains several pieces of information.
- There are several kinds of event, and corresponding accessor and utility
- functions. We tried to abstract them so that they would apply equally
- well to a number of window systems.
-
- NOTE: All timestamps are measured as milliseconds since Emacs started.
-
- key_press_event
- event_channel A token representing which keyboard generated it.
- For this kind of event, this is a console object.
- timestamp When it happened
- key What keysym this is; a character or a symbol.
- If it is a character, it will be a printing
- ASCII character.
- modifiers Bucky-bits on that key: control, meta, etc.
- For most keys, Shift is not a bit; that is implicit
- in the keyboard layout.
-
- button_press_event
- button_release_event
- event_channel A token representing which mouse generated it.
- For this kind of event, this is a frame object.
- timestamp When it happened
- button What button went down or up.
- modifiers Bucky-bits on that button: shift, control, meta, etc.
- x, y Where it was at the button-state-change (in pixels).
-
- pointer_motion_event
- event_channel A token representing which mouse generated it.
- For this kind of event, this is a frame object.
- timestamp When it happened
- x, y Where it was after it moved (in pixels).
- modifiers Bucky-bits down when the motion was detected.
- (Possibly not all window systems will provide this?)
-
- process_event
- timestamp When it happened
- process the emacs "process" object in question
-
- timeout_event
- timestamp Now (really, when the timeout was signaled)
- interval_id The ID returned when the associated call to
- add_timeout_cb() was made
- ------ the rest of the fields are filled in by Emacs -----
- id_number The Emacs timeout ID for this timeout (more
- than one timeout event can have the same value
- here, since Emacs timeouts, as opposed to
- add_timeout_cb() timeouts, can resignal
- themselves)
- function An elisp function to call when this timeout is
- processed.
- object The object passed to that function.
-
- eval_event
- timestamp When it happened
- function An elisp function to call with this event object.
- object Anything.
- This kind of event is used internally; sometimes the
- window system interface would like to inform emacs of
- some user action (such as focusing on another frame)
- but needs that to happen synchronously with the other
- user input, like keypresses. This is useful when
- events are reported through callbacks rather
- than in the standard event stream.
-
- misc_user_event
- timestamp When it happened
- function An elisp function to call with this event object.
- object Anything.
- This is similar to an eval_event, except that it is
- generated by user actions: selections in the
- menubar or scrollbar actions. It is a "command"
- event, like key and mouse presses (and unlike mouse
- motion, process output, and enter and leave window
- hooks). In many ways, eval_events are not the same
- as keypresses or misc_user_events.
-
- magic_event
- No user-serviceable parts within. This is for things
- like KeymapNotify and ExposeRegion events and so on
- that emacs itself doesn't care about, but which it
- must do something with for proper interaction with
- the window system.
-
- Magic_events are handled somewhat asynchronously, just
- like subprocess filters. However, occasionally a
- magic_event needs to be handled synchronously; in that
- case, the asynchronous handling of the magic_event will
- push an eval_event back onto the queue, which will be
- handled synchronously later. This is one of the
- reasons why eval_events exist; I'm not entirely happy
- with this aspect of this event model.
-
-
- The function `next-event' blocks and returns one of the above-described
- event objects. The function `dispatch-event' takes an event and processes
- it in the appropriate way.
-
- For a process-event, dispatch-event calls the process's handler; for a
- mouse-motion event, the mouse-motion-handler hook is called, and so on.
- For magic-events, dispatch-event does window-system-dependent things,
- including calling some non-window-system-dependent hooks: map-frame-hook,
- unmap-frame-hook, mouse-enter-frame-hook, and mouse-leave-frame-hook.
-
- The function `next-command-event' calls `next-event' until it gets a key or
- button from the user (that is, not a process, motion, timeout, or magic
- event). If it gets an event that is not a key or button, it calls
- `dispatch-event' on it immediately and reads another one. The
- next-command-event function could be implemented in Emacs Lisp, though it
- isn't. Generally one should call `next-command-event' instead of
- `next-event'.
-
- read-char calls next-command-event; if it doesn't get an event that can be
- converted to an ASCII character, it signals an error. Otherwise it returns
- an integer.
-
- The variable `last-command-char' always contains an integer, or nil (if the
- last read event has no ASCII equivalent, as when it is a mouse-click or a
- non-ASCII character chord.)
-
- The new variable `last-command-event' holds an event object, that could be
- a non-ASCII character, a button click, a menu selection, etc.
-
- The variable `unread-command-char' no longer exists, and has been replaced
- by `unread-command-events'. With the new event model, it is incorrect for
- code to do (setq unread-command-char (read-char)), because all user-input
- can't be represented as ASCII characters. *** This is an incompatible
- change. Code which sets `unread-command-char' must be updated to use the
- combination of `next-command-event' and `unread-command-events' instead.
-
- The functions `this-command-keys' and `recent-keys' return a vector of
- event objects, instead of a string of ASCII characters. *** This also
- is an incompatible change.
-
- Almost nothing happens at interrupt level; the SIGIO handler simply sets a
- flag, and later, the X event queue is scanned for KeyPress events which map
- to ^G. All redisplay happens in the main thread of the process.
-
-
- *** Keymaps
- -----------
-
- Instead of keymaps being alists or obarrays, they are a new primary data
- type. The only user access to the contents of a keymap is through the
- existing keymap-manipulation functions, and a new function, map-keymap.
- This means that existing code that manipulates keymaps may need to
- be changed.
-
- One of our goals with the new input and keymap code was to make more
- character combinations available for binding, besides just ASCII and
- function keys. We want to be able bind different commands to Control-a
- and Control-Shift-a; we also want it to be possible for the keys Control-h
- and Backspace (and Control-M and Return, and Control-I and Tab, etc) to
- be distinct.
-
- One of the most common complaints that new Emacs users have is that backspace
- is help. The answer is to play around with the keyboard-translate-table, or
- be lucky enough to have a system administrator who has done this for you
- already; but if it were possible to bind backspace and C-h to different
- things, then (under a window manager at least) both backspace and delete
- would delete a character, and ^H would be help. There's no need to deal
- with xmodmap, kbd-translate-table, etc.
-
- Here are some more examples: suppose you want to bind one function to Tab,
- and another to Control-Tab. This can't be done if Tab and Control-I are the
- same thing. What about control keys that have no ASCII equivalent, like
- Control-< ? One might want that to be bound to set-mark-at-point-min. We
- want M-C-Backspace to be kill-backward-sexp. But we want M-Backspace to be
- kill-backward-word. Again, this can't be done if Backspace and C-h are
- indistinguishable.
-
- The user represents keys as a string of ASCII characters (when possible and
- convenient), or as a vector of event objects, or as a vector of "key
- description lists", that looks like (control a), or (control meta delete)
- or (shift f1). The order of the modifier-names is not significant, so
- (meta control x) and (control meta x) are the same.
-
- `define-key' knows how to take any of the above representations and store them
- into a keymap. When Emacs wants to return a key sequence (this-command-keys,
- recent-keys, keyboard-macros, and read-key-sequence, for example) it returns
- a vector of event objects. Keyboard macros can also be represented as ASCII
- strings or as vectors of key description lists.
-
- This is an incompatible change: code which calls `this-command-keys',
- `recent-keys', `read-key-sequence', or manipulates keyboard-macros probably
- needs to be changed so that it no longer assumes that the returned value is a
- string.
-
- Control-Shift-a is specified as (control A), not (control shift a), since A
- is a two-case character. But for keys that don't have an upper case
- version, like F1, Backspace, and Escape, you use the (shift backspace) syntax.
-
- See the doc string for our version of define-key, reproduced below in the
- `Changed Functions' section. Note that when the KEYS argument is a string,
- it has the same semantics as the v18 define-key.
-
-
- *** Xt Integration
- ------------------
-
- The heart of the event loop is implemented in terms of the Xt event functions
- (specifically XtAppProcessEvent), and uses Xt's concept of timeouts and
- file-descriptor callbacks, eliminating a large amount of system-dependent code
- (Xt does it for you.)
-
- If Emacs is compiled with support for X, it uses the Xt event loop even when
- Emacs is not running on an X display (the Xt event loop supports this). This
- makes it possible to run Emacs on a dumb TTY, and later connect it to one or
- more X servers. It should also be possible to later connect an existing Emacs
- process to additional TTY's, although this code is still experimental. (Our
- intent at this point is not to have an Emacs that is being used by multiple
- people at the same time: it is to make it possible for someone to go home, log
- in on a dialup line, and connect to the same Emacs process that is running
- under X in their office without having to recreate their buffer state and so
- on.)
-
- If Emacs is not compiled with support for X, then it instead uses more general
- code, something like what v18 does; but this way of doing things is a lot more
- modular.
-
- (Linking Emacs with Xt seems to only add about 300k to the executable size,
- compared with an Emacs linked with Xlib only.)
-
-
- *** Region Highlighting
- -----------------------
-
- If the variable `zmacs-regions' is true, then the region between point and
- mark will be highlighted when "active". Those commands which push a mark
- (such as C-SPC, and C-x C-x) make the region become "active" and thus
- highlighted. Most commands (all non-motion commands, basically) cause it to
- become non-highlighted (non-"active"). Commands that operate on the region
- (such as C-w, C-x C-l, etc.) only work if the region is in the highlighted
- state.
-
- zmacs-activate-region-hook and zmacs-deactivate-region-hook are run at the
- appropriate times; under X, zmacs-activate-region-hook makes the X selection
- be the region between point and mark, thus doing two things at once: making
- the region and the X selection be the same; and making the region highlight
- in the same way as the X selection.
-
- If `zmacs-regions' is true, then the `mark-marker' command returns nil unless
- the region is currently in the active (highlighted) state. With an argument
- of t, this returns the mark (if there is one) regardless of the active-region
- state. You should *generally* not use the mark unless the region is active,
- if the user has expressed a preference for the active-region model. Watch
- out! Moving this marker changes the mark position. If you set the marker not
- to point anywhere, the buffer will have no mark.
-
- In this way, the primary selection is a fairly transitory entity; but
- when something is copied to the kill ring, it is made the Clipboard
- selection. It is also stored into CUT_BUFFER0, for compatibility with
- X applications that don't understand selections (like Emacs18).
-
- Compatibility note: if you have code which uses (mark) or (mark-marker),
- then you need to either: change those calls to (mark t) or (mark-marker t);
- or simply bind `zmacs-regions' to nil around the call to mark or mark-marker.
- This is probably the best solution, since it will work in Emacs 18 as well.
-
-
- *** Menubars and Dialog Boxes
- -----------------------------
-
- Here is an example of a menubar definition:
-
- (defvar default-menubar
- '(("File" ["Open File..." find-file t]
- ["Save Buffer" save-buffer t]
- ["Save Buffer As..." write-file t]
- ["Revert Buffer" revert-buffer t]
- "-----"
- ["Print Buffer" lpr-buffer t]
- "-----"
- ["Delete Frame" delete-frame t]
- ["Kill Buffer..." kill-buffer t]
- ["Exit Emacs" save-buffers-kill-emacs t]
- )
- ("Edit" ["Undo" advertised-undo t]
- ["Cut" kill-primary-selection t]
- ["Copy" copy-primary-selection t]
- ["Paste" yank-clipboard-selection t]
- ["Clear" delete-primary-selection t]
- )
- ...))
-
- The first element of each menu item is the string to print on the menu.
-
- The second element is the callback function; if it is a symbol, it is
- invoked with `call-interactively.' If it is a list, it is invoked with
- `eval'.
-
- If the second element is a symbol, then the menu also displays the key that
- is bound to that command (if any).
-
- The third element of the menu items determines whether the item is selectable.
- It may be t, nil, or a form to evaluate. Also, a hook is run just before a
- menu is exposed, which can be used to change the value of these slots.
- For example, there is a hook that makes the "undo" menu item be selectable
- only in the cases when `advertised-undo' would not signal an error.
-
- Menus may have other menus nested within them; they will cascade.
-
- There are utility functions for adding items to menus, deleting items,
- disabling them, etc.
-
- The function `popup-menu' takes a menu description and pops it up.
-
- The function `popup-dialog-box' takes a dialog-box description and pops
- it up. Dialog box descriptions look a lot like menu descriptions.
-
- The menubar, menu, and dialog-box code is implemented as a library,
- with an interface which hides the toolkit that implements it.
-
-
- *** Isearch Changes
- -------------------
-
- Isearch has been reimplemented in a different way, adding some new features,
- and causing a few incompatible changes.
-
- - the old isearch-*-char variables are no longer supported. In the old
- system, one could make ^A mean "repeat the search" by doing something
- like (setq search-repeat-char ?C-a). In the new system, this is
- accomplished with
-
- (define-key isearch-mode-map "\C-a" 'isearch-repeat-forward)
-
- - The advantage of using the normal keymap mechanism for this is that you
- can bind more than one key to an isearch command: for example, both C-a
- and C-s could do the same thing inside isearch mode. You can also bind
- multi-key sequences inside of isearch mode, and bind non-ASCII keys.
- For example, to use the F1 key to terminate a search:
-
- (define-key isearch-mode-map 'f1 'isearch-exit)
-
- or to make ``C-c C-c'' terminate a search:
-
- (define-key isearch-mode-map "\C-c\C-c" 'isearch-exit)
-
- - If isearch is behaving case-insensitively (the default) and you type an
- upper case character, then the search will become case-sensitive. This
- can be disabled by setting `search-caps-disable-folding' to nil.
-
- - There is a history ring of the strings previously searched for; typing
- M-p or M-n while searching will cycle through this ring. Typing M-TAB
- will do completion across the set of items in the history ring.
-
- - The ESC key is no longer used to terminate an incremental search. The
- RET key should be used instead. This change is necessary for it to be
- possible to bind "meta" characters to isearch commands.
-
-
- *** Startup Code Changes
- ------------------------
-
- The initial X frame is mapped before the user's .emacs file is executed.
- Without this, there is no way for the user to see any error messages
- generated by their .emacs file, any windows created by the .emacs file
- don't show up, and the copyleft notice isn't shown.
-
- The default values for load-path, exec-path, lock-directory, and
- Info-directory-list are not (necessarily) built into Emacs, but are
- computed at startup time.
-
- First, Emacs looks at the directory in which its executable file resides:
-
- o If that directory contains subdirectories named "lisp" and "lib-src",
- then those directories are used as the lisp library and exec directory.
-
- o If the parent of the directory in which the emacs executable is located
- contains "lisp" and "lib-src" subdirectories, then those are used.
-
- o If ../lib/xemacs-<version> (starting from the directory in which the
- emacs executable is located) contains a "lisp" subdirectory and either
- a "lib-src" subdirectory or a <configuration-name> subdirectory, then
- those are used.
-
- o If the emacs executable that was run is a symbolic link, then the link
- is chased, and the resultant directory is checked as above.
-
- (Actually, it doesn't just look for "lisp/", it looks for "lisp/prim/",
- which reduces the chances of a false positive.)
-
- If the lisp directory contains subdirectories, they are added to the default
- load-path as well. If the site-lisp directory exists and contains
- subdirectories, they are then added. Subdirectories whose names begin with
- a dot or a hyphen are not added to the load-path.
-
- These heuristics fail if the Emacs binary was copied from the main Emacs
- tree to some other directory, and links for the lisp directory were not put
- in. This isn't much of a restriction: either make there be subdirectories
- (or symbolic links) of the directory of the emacs executable, or make the
- "installed" emacs executable be a symbolic link to an executable in a more
- appropriate directory structure. For example, this setup works:
-
- /usr/local/xemacs/xemacs* ; The executable.
- /usr/local/xemacs/lisp/ ; The associated directories.
- /usr/local/xemacs/etc/ ; Any of the files in this list
- /usr/local/xemacs/lock/ ; could be symbolic links as well.
- /usr/local/xemacs/info/
-
- As does this:
-
- /usr/local/bin/xemacs -> ../xemacs/src/xemacs-19.14 ; A link...
- /usr/local/xemacs/src/xemacs-19.14* ; The executable,
- /usr/local/xemacs/lisp/ ; and the rest of
- /usr/local/xemacs/etc/ ; the source tree
- /usr/local/xemacs/lock/
- /usr/local/xemacs/info/
-
- This configuration might be used for a multi-architecture installation; assume
- that $LOCAL refers to a directory which contains only files specific to a
- particular architecture (i.e., executables) and $SHARED refers to those files
- which are not machine specific (i.e., lisp code and documentation.)
-
- $LOCAL/bin/xemacs@ -> $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/xemacs*
- $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/lisp@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/lisp/
- $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/etc@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/etc/
- $LOCAL/xemacs-19.14/info@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/info/
-
- The following would also work, but the above is probably more attractive:
-
- $LOCAL/bin/xemacs*
- $LOCAL/bin/lisp@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/lisp/
- $LOCAL/bin/etc@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/etc/
- $LOCAL/bin/info@ -> $SHARED/xemacs-19.14/info/
-
- If Emacs can't find the requisite directories, it writes a message like this
- (or some appropriate subset of it) to stderr:
-
- WARNING:
- couldn't find an obvious default for load-path, exec-directory, and
- lock-directory, and there were no defaults specified in paths.h when
- Emacs was built. Perhaps some directories don't exist, or the Emacs
- executable, /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/xemacs is in a strange place?
-
- Without both exec-directory and load-path, Emacs will be very broken.
- Consider making a symbolic link from /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/etc
- to wherever the appropriate Emacs etc/ directory is, and from
- /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/lisp/ to wherever the appropriate Emacs
- lisp library is.
-
- Without lock-directory set, file locking won't work. Consider
- creating /cadillac-th/jwz/somewhere/lock as a directory or symbolic
- link for use as the lock directory.
-
- The default installation tree is the following:
-
- /usr/local/bin/b2m ;
- ctags ; executables that
- emacsclient ; should be in
- etags ; user's path
- xemacs -> xemacs-<version> ;
- xemacs ;
- /usr/local/lib/xemacs/site-lisp
- /usr/local/lib/xemacs/lock
- /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/etc ; architecture ind. files
- /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/info
- /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/lisp
- /usr/local/lib/xemacs-<version>/<configuration> ; binaries emacs may run
-
-
- *** X Resources
- ---------------
-
- (Note: This section is copied verbatim from the XEmacs Reference Manual.)
-
- The Emacs resources are generally set per-frame. Each Emacs frame
- can have its own name or the same name as another, depending on the
- name passed to the `make-frame' function.
-
- You can specify resources for all frames with the syntax:
-
- Emacs*parameter: value
-
- or
-
- Emacs*EmacsFrame.parameter:value
-
- You can specify resources for a particular frame with the syntax:
-
- Emacs*FRAME-NAME.parameter: value
-
-
- **** Geometry Resources
- -----------------------
-
- To make the default size of all Emacs frames be 80 columns by 55
- lines, do this:
-
- Emacs*EmacsFrame.geometry: 80x55
-
- To set the geometry of a particular frame named `fred', do this:
-
- Emacs*fred.geometry: 80x55
-
- Important! Do not use the following syntax:
-
- Emacs*geometry: 80x55
-
- You should never use `*geometry' with any X application. It does not
- say "make the geometry of Emacs be 80 columns by 55 lines." It really
- says, "make Emacs and all subwindows thereof be 80x55 in whatever units
- they care to measure in." In particular, that is both telling the
- Emacs text pane to be 80x55 in characters, and telling the menubar pane
- to be 80x55 pixels, which is surely not what you want.
-
- As a special case, this geometry specification also works (and sets
- the default size of all Emacs frames to 80 columns by 55 lines):
-
- Emacs.geometry: 80x55
-
- since that is the syntax used with most other applications (since most
- other applications have only one top-level window, unlike Emacs). In
- general, however, the top-level shell (the unmapped ApplicationShell
- widget named `Emacs' that is the parent of the shell widgets that
- actually manage the individual frames) does not have any interesting
- resources on it, and you should set the resources on the frames instead.
-
- The `-geometry' command-line argument sets only the geometry of the
- initial frame created by Emacs.
-
- A more complete explanation of geometry-handling is
-
- * The `-geometry' command-line option sets the `Emacs.geometry'
- resource, that is, the geometry of the ApplicationShell.
-
- * For the first frame created, the size of the frame is taken from
- the ApplicationShell if it is specified, otherwise from the
- geometry of the frame.
-
- * For subsequent frames, the order is reversed: First the frame, and
- then the ApplicationShell.
-
- * For the first frame created, the position of the frame is taken
- from the ApplicationShell (`Emacs.geometry') if it is specified,
- otherwise from the geometry of the frame.
-
- * For subsequent frames, the position is taken only from the frame,
- and never from the ApplicationShell.
-
- This is rather complicated, but it does seem to provide the most
- intuitive behavior with respect to the default sizes and positions of
- frames created in various ways.
-
-
- **** Iconic Resources
- ---------------------
-
- Analogous to `-geometry', the `-iconic' command-line option sets the
- iconic flag of the ApplicationShell (`Emacs.iconic') and always applies
- to the first frame created regardless of its name. However, it is
- possible to set the iconic flag on particular frames (by name) by using
- the `Emacs*FRAME-NAME.iconic' resource.
-
-
- **** Resource List
- ------------------
-
- Emacs frames accept the following resources:
-
- `geometry' (class `Geometry'): string
- Initial geometry for the frame. *Note Geometry Resources:: for a
- complete discussion of how this works.
-
- `iconic' (class `Iconic'): boolean
- Whether this frame should appear in the iconified state.
-
- `internalBorderWidth' (class `InternalBorderWidth'): int
- How many blank pixels to leave between the text and the edge of the
- window.
-
- `interline' (class `Interline'): int
- How many pixels to leave between each line (may not be
- implemented).
-
- `menubar' (class `Menubar'): boolean
- Whether newly-created frames should initially have a menubar. Set
- to true by default.
-
- `initiallyUnmapped' (class `InitiallyUnmapped'): boolean
- Whether XEmacs should leave the initial frame unmapped when it
- starts up. This is useful if you are starting XEmacs as a server
- (e.g. in conjunction with gnuserv or the external client widget).
- You can also control this with the `-unmapped' command-line option.
-
- `barCursor' (class `BarColor'): boolean
- Whether the cursor should be displayed as a bar, or the
- traditional box.
-
- `textPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
- The cursor to use when the mouse is over text. This resource is
- used to initialize the variable `x-pointer-shape'.
-
- `selectionPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
- The cursor to use when the mouse is over a selectable text region
- (an extent with the `highlight' property; for example, an Info
- cross-reference). This resource is used to initialize the variable
- `x-selection-pointer-shape'.
-
- `spacePointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
- The cursor to use when the mouse is over a blank space in a buffer
- (that is, after the end of a line or after the end-of-file). This
- resource is used to initialize the variable
- `x-nontext-pointer-shape'.
-
- `modeLinePointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
- The cursor to use when the mouse is over a mode line. This
- resource is used to initialize the variable `x-mode-pointer-shape'.
-
- `gcPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
- The cursor to display when a garbage-collection is in progress.
- This resource is used to initialize the variable
- `x-gc-pointer-shape'.
-
- `scrollbarPointer' (class `Cursor'): cursor-name
- The cursor to use when the mouse is over the scrollbar. This
- resource is used to initialize the variable
- `x-scrollbar-pointer-shape'.
-
- `pointerColor' (class `Foreground'): color-name
- `pointerBackground' (class `Background'): color-name
- The foreground and background colors of the mouse cursor. These
- resources are used to initialize the variables
- `x-pointer-foreground-color' and `x-pointer-background-color'.
-
- `scrollBarWidth' (class `ScrollBarWidth'): integer
- How wide the vertical scrollbars should be, in pixels; 0 means no
- vertical scrollbars. You can also use a resource specification of
- the form `*scrollbar.width', or the usual toolkit scrollbar
- resources: `*XmScrollBar.width' (Motif), `*XlwScrollBar.width'
- (Lucid), or `*Scrollbar.thickness' (Athena). We don't recommend
- that you use the toolkit resources, though, because they're
- dependent on how exactly your particular build of XEmacs was
- configured.
-
- `scrollBarHeight' (class `ScrollBarHeight'): integer
- How high the horizontal scrollbars should be, in pixels; 0 means no
- horizontal scrollbars. You can also use a resource specification
- of the form `*scrollbar.height', or the usual toolkit scrollbar
- resources: `*XmScrollBar.height' (Motif), `*XlwScrollBar.height'
- (Lucid), or `*Scrollbar.thickness' (Athena). We don't recommend
- that you use the toolkit resources, though, because they're
- dependent on how exactly your particular build of XEmacs was
- configured.
-
- `scrollBarPlacement' (class `ScrollBarPlacement'): string
- Where the horizontal and vertical scrollbars should be positioned.
- This should be one of the four strings `bottom-left',
- `bottom-right', `top-left', and `top-right'. Default is
- `bottom-right' for the Motif and Lucid scrollbars and
- `bottom-left' for the Athena scrollbars.
-
- `topToolBarHeight' (class `TopToolBarHeight'): integer
- `bottomToolBarHeight' (class `BottomToolBarHeight'): integer
- `leftToolBarWidth' (class `LeftToolBarWidth'): integer
- `rightToolBarWidth' (class `RightToolBarWidth'): integer
- Height and width of the four possible toolbars.
-
- `topToolBarShadowColor' (class `TopToolBarShadowColor'): color-name
- `bottomToolBarShadowColor' (class `BottomToolBarShadowColor'): color-name
- Color of the top and bottom shadows for the toolbars. NOTE: These
- resources do *not* have anything to do with the top and bottom
- toolbars (i.e. the toolbars at the top and bottom of the frame)!
- Rather, they affect the top and bottom shadows around the edges of
- all four kinds of toolbars.
-
- `topToolBarShadowPixmap' (class `TopToolBarShadowPixmap'): pixmap-name
- `bottomToolBarShadowPixmap' (class `BottomToolBarShadowPixmap'): pixmap-name
- Pixmap of the top and bottom shadows for the toolbars. If set,
- these resources override the corresponding color resources. NOTE:
- These resources do *not* have anything to do with the top and
- bottom toolbars (i.e. the toolbars at the top and bottom of the
- frame)! Rather, they affect the top and bottom shadows around the
- edges of all four kinds of toolbars.
-
- `toolBarShadowThickness' (class `ToolBarShadowThickness'): integer
- Thickness of the shadows around the toolbars, in pixels.
-
- `visualBell' (class `VisualBell'): boolean
- Whether XEmacs should flash the screen rather than making an
- audible beep.
-
- `bellVolume' (class `BellVolume'): integer
- Volume of the audible beep.
-
- `useBackingStore' (class `UseBackingStore'): boolean
- Whether XEmacs should set the backing-store attribute of the X
- windows it creates. This increases the memory usage of the X
- server but decreases the amount of X traffic necessary to update
- the screen, and is useful when the connection to the X server goes
- over a low-bandwidth line such as a modem connection.
-
-
- **** Face Resources
- -------------------
-
- The attributes of faces are also per-frame. They can be specified as:
-
- Emacs.FACE_NAME.parameter: value
-
- (*do not* use `Emacs*FACE_NAME...')
-
- or
-
- Emacs*FRAME_NAME.FACE_NAME.parameter: value
-
- Faces accept the following resources:
-
- `attributeFont' (class `AttributeFont'): font-name
- The font of this face.
-
- `attributeForeground' (class `AttributeForeground'): color-name
- `attributeBackground' (class `AttributeBackground'): color-name
- The foreground and background colors of this face.
-
- `attributeBackgroundPixmap' (class `AttributeBackgroundPixmap'): file-name
- The name of an XBM file (or XPM file, if your version of Emacs
- supports XPM), to use as a background stipple.
-
- `attributeUnderline' (class `AttributeUnderline'): boolean
- Whether text in this face should be underlined.
-
- All text is displayed in some face, defaulting to the face named
- `default'. To set the font of normal text, use
- `Emacs*default.attributeFont'. To set it in the frame named `fred', use
- `Emacs*fred.default.attributeFont'.
-
- These are the names of the predefined faces:
-
- `default'
- Everything inherits from this.
-
- `bold'
- If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to
- find a bold version of the font of the default face.
-
- `italic'
- If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to
- find an italic version of the font of the default face.
-
- `bold-italic'
- If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to
- find a bold-italic version of the font of the default face.
-
- `modeline'
- This is the face that the modeline is displayed in. If not
- specified in the resource database, it is determined from the
- default face by reversing the foreground and background colors.
-
- `highlight'
- This is the face that highlighted extents (for example, Info
- cross-references and possible completions, when the mouse passes
- over them) are displayed in.
-
- `left-margin'
- `right-margin'
- These are the faces that the left and right annotation margins are
- displayed in.
-
- `zmacs-region'
- This is the face that mouse selections are displayed in.
-
- `text-cursor'
- This is the face that the cursor is displayed in.
-
- `isearch'
- This is the face that the matched text being searched for is
- displayed in.
-
- `info-node'
- This is the face of info menu items. If unspecified, it is copied
- from `bold-italic'.
-
- `info-xref'
- This is the face of info cross-references. If unspecified, it is
- copied from `bold'. (Note that, when the mouse passes over a
- cross-reference, the cross-reference's face is determined from a
- combination of the `info-xref' and `highlight' faces.)
-
- Other packages might define their own faces; to see a list of all
- faces, use any of the interactive face-manipulation commands such as
- `set-face-font' and type `?' when you are prompted for the name of a
- face.
-
- If the `bold', `italic', and `bold-italic' faces are not specified
- in the resource database, then XEmacs attempts to derive them from the
- font of the default face. It can only succeed at this if you have
- specified the default font using the XLFD (X Logical Font Description)
- format, which looks like
-
- *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
-
- If you use any of the other, less strict font name formats, some of
- which look like
-
- lucidasanstypewriter-12
- fixed
- 9x13
-
- then XEmacs won't be able to guess the names of the bold and italic
- versions. All X fonts can be referred to via XLFD-style names, so you
- should use those forms. See the man pages for `X(1)', `xlsfonts(1)',
- and `xfontsel(1)'.
-
-
- **** Widgets
- ------------
-
- There are several structural widgets between the terminal EmacsFrame
- widget and the top level ApplicationShell; the exact names and types of
- these widgets change from release to release (for example, they changed
- in 19.9, 19.10, 19.12, and 19.13) and are subject to further change in
- the future, so you should avoid mentioning them in your resource database.
- The above-mentioned syntaxes should be forward-compatible. As of 19.14,
- the exact widget hierarchy is as follows:
-
- INVOCATION-NAME "shell" "container" FRAME-NAME
- x-emacs-application-class "TopLevelEmacsShell" "EmacsManager" "EmacsFrame"
-
- (for normal frames)
-
- or
-
- INVOCATION-NAME "shell" "container" FRAME-NAME
- x-emacs-application-class "TransientEmacsShell" "EmacsManager" "EmacsFrame"
-
- (for popup/dialog-box frames)
-
- where INVOCATION-NAME is the terminal component of the name of the
- XEmacs executable (usually `xemacs'), and `x-emacs-application-class'
- is generally `Emacs'.
-
-
- **** Menubar Resources
- ----------------------
-
- As the menubar is implemented as a widget which is not a part of
- XEmacs proper, it does not use the face mechanism for specifying fonts
- and colors: It uses whatever resources are appropriate to the type of
- widget which is used to implement it.
-
- If Emacs was compiled to use only the Motif-lookalike menu widgets,
- then one way to specify the font of the menubar would be
-
- Emacs*menubar*font: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
-
- If the Motif library is being used, then one would have to use
-
- Emacs*menubar*fontList: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
-
- because the Motif library uses the `fontList' resource name instead
- of `font', which has subtly different semantics.
-
- The same is true of the scrollbars: They accept whichever resources
- are appropriate for the toolkit in use.
-
-
- *** Source Code Highlighting
- ----------------------------
-
- It's possible to have your buffers "decorated" with fonts or colors
- indicating syntactic structures (such as strings, comments, function names,
- "reserved words", etc.). In XEmacs, the preferred way to do this is with
- font-lock-mode; activate it by adding the following code to your .emacs file:
-
- (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
- (add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
- (add-hook 'c++-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
- (add-hook 'dired-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
- ...etc...
-
- To customize it, see the descriptions of the function `font-lock-mode' and
- the variables `font-lock-keywords', `c-font-lock-keywords', etc.
-
- There exist several other source code highlighting packages, but font-lock
- does one thing that most others don't do: highlights as you type new text;
- and one thing that no others do: bases part of its decoration on the
- syntax table of the major mode. Font-lock has C-level support to do this
- efficiently, so it should also be significantly faster than the others.
-
- If there's something that another highlighting package does that you can't
- make font-lock do, let us know. We would prefer to consolidate all of the
- desired functionality into one package rather than ship several different
- packages which do essentially the same thing in different ways.
-
-
- ** Differences Between XEmacs and Emacs 18
- ==========================================
-
- Auto-configure support has been added, so it should be fairly easy to compile
- XEmacs on different systems. If you have any problems or feedback about
- compiling on your system, please let us know.
-
- We have reimplemented the basic input model in a more general way; instead of
- X input being a special-case of the normal ASCII input stream, XEmacs has a
- concept of "input events", and ASCII characters are a subset of that. The
- events that XEmacs knows about are not X events, but are a generalization of
- them, so that XEmacs can eventually be ported to different window systems.
-
- We have reimplemented keymaps so that sequences of events can be stored into
- them instead of just ASCII codes; it is possible to, for example, bind
- different commands to each of the chords Control-h, Control-H, Backspace,
- Control-Backspace, and Super-Shift-Backspace. Key bindings, function key
- bindings, and mouse bindings live in the same keymaps.
-
- Input and display of all ISO-8859-1 characters is supported.
-
- You can have multiple X windows ("frames" in XEmacs terminology).
-
- XEmacs has objects called "extents" and "faces", which are roughly
- analogous to Epoch's "buttons," "zones," and "styles." An extent is a
- region of text (a start position and an end position) and a face is a
- collection of textual attributes like fonts and colors. Every extent
- is displayed in some "face", so changing the properties of a face
- immediately updates the display of all associated extents. Faces can
- be frame-local: you can have a region of text which displays with
- completely different attributes when its buffer is viewed from a
- different X window.
-
- The display attributes of faces may be specified either in lisp or through
- the X resource manager.
-
- Pixmaps of arbitrary size can be embedded in a buffer.
-
- Variable width fonts work.
-
- The height of a line is the height of the tallest font on that line, instead
- of all lines having the same height.
-
- XEmacs uses the MIT "Xt" toolkit instead of raw Xlib calls, which
- makes it be a more well-behaved X citizen (and also improves
- portability). A result of this is that it is possible to include
- other Xt "Widgets" in the XEmacs window. Also, XEmacs understands the
- standard Xt command-line arguments.
-
- XEmacs understands the X11 "Selection" mechanism; it's possible to define
- and customize selection converter functions and new selection types from
- Emacs Lisp, without having to recompile XEmacs.
-
- XEmacs provides support for ToolTalk on systems that have it.
-
- XEmacs supports the Zmacs/Lispm style of region highlighting, where the
- region between the point and mark is highlighted when in its "active" state.
-
- XEmacs has a menubar, whose contents are customizable from emacs-lisp.
- This menubar looks Motif-ish, but does not require Motif. If you already
- own Motif, however, you can configure XEmacs to use a *real* Motif menubar
- instead.
-
- XEmacs can ask questions using popup dialog boxes. Any command executed from
- a menu will ask yes/no questions with dialog boxes, while commands executed
- via the keyboard will use the minibuffer.
-
- XEmacs has vertical and horizontal scrollbars.
-
- The initial load-path is computed at run-time, instead of at compile-time.
- This means that if you move the XEmacs executable and associated directories
- to somewhere else, you don't have to recompile anything.
-
- You can specify what the title of the XEmacs windows and icons should be
- with the variables `frame-title-format' and `frame-icon-title-format',
- which have the same syntax as `mode-line-format'.
-
- XEmacs now supports floating-point numbers.
-
- XEmacs now knows about timers directly, instead of them being simulated by
- a subprocess.
-
- XEmacs understands truenames, and can be configured to notice when you are
- visiting two names of the same file. See the variables find-file-use-truenames
- and find-file-compare-truenames.
-
- If you're running on a machine with audio hardware, you can specify sound
- files for XEmacs to play instead of the default X beep. See the documentation
- of the function load-sound-file and the variable sound-alist.
-
- An XEmacs frame can be placed within an "external client widget" managed by
- another application. This allows an application to use an XEmacs frame as its
- text pane rather than the standard Text widget that is provided with Motif or
- Athena. XEmacs supports Motif applications, generic Xt (e.g. Athena)
- applications, and raw Xlib applications.
-
- Random changes to the emacs-lisp library: (some of this was not written by
- us, but is included because it's free software and we think it's good stuff)
-
- - there is a new optimizing byte-compiler
- - there is a new abbrev-based mail-alias mechanism
- - the -*- line can contain local-variable settings
- - there is a new TAGS package
- - there is a new VI-emulation mode (viper)
- - there is a new implementation of Dired
- - there is a new implementation of Isearch
- - the VM package for reading mail is provided
- - the W3 package for browsing the World Wide Web hypertext information
- system is provided
- - the Hyperbole package, a programmable information management and
- hypertext system
- - the OO-Browser package, a multi-language object-oriented browser
-
- There are many more specifics in the "Miscellaneous Changes" section, below.
-
- The online Emacs Manual and Emacs-Lisp Manual are now both relatively
- up-to-date.
-