6 This file presents some general information about XEmacs. It is
7 primarily about the changes in recent XEmacs versions and its release
10 Use `C-c C-f' to move to the next equal level of outline, and
11 `C-c C-b' to move to previous equal level. `C-h m' will give more
12 info about the Outline mode. Many commands are also available through
15 Users who would like to know which capabilities have been introduced
16 in each release should look at the appropriate section of this file.
17 Starting with version 20.0, XEmacs includes ChangeLogs, which can be
18 consulted for a more detailed list of changes.
20 Users interested in some of the details of how XEmacs differs from GNU
21 Emacs should read the section "What's Different?" near the end of this
24 N.B. The term "GNU Emacs" refers to any release of Emacs Version
25 19 from the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project. (We do not
26 say just "Emacs" as Richard M. Stallman ["RMS"] prefers, because
27 it is clearly a more generic term.) The term "XEmacs" refers to
28 this program or to its predecessors "Era" and "Lucid Emacs". The
29 predecessor of all these program is called "Emacs 18". When no
30 particular version is implied, "Emacs" will be used.
33 * Changes in XEmacs 21.2
34 ========================
36 ** The functions in rect.el have been almost completely rewritten...
37 to avoid inserting undesirable spaces, notably at the end of lines.
38 Two typical examples of this old behavior are `string-rectangle', which filled
39 all lines up to the right side of the rectangle, and `clear-rectangle', which
40 filled even empty lines up to the left side.
42 This is not the case any more. All these functions have been rewritten to
43 avoid inserting unwanted spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to
46 As a side effect, `move-to-column' now also accepts 'coerce as its second
47 argument, meaning that the line shouldn't be filled if its too short to reach
50 ** You can now customize and save comments for faces and variables.
52 In Custom buffers, a new menu entry allows you to add and edit a comment.
53 Comments for variables can also be assigned by calling
54 `customize-set-(value|variable)' with a prefix argument.
56 ** XEmacs now locates the early package hierarchy at ~/.xemacs/packages.
58 This has changed from simply ~/.xemacs.
60 ** `delete-key-deletes-forward' now defaults to t.
62 `delete-key-deletes-forward' is the variable that regulates the
63 behaviour of the delete key on the systems that offer both a backspace
64 and a delete key. If set to nil, the key labeled "Delete" will delete
65 backward. If set to non-nil, the "Delete" key will delete forward,
66 except on keyboards where a "Backspace" key is not provided.
68 Unless our implementation has bugs, the only reason why you would want
69 to set `delete-key-deletes-forward' to nil is if you want to use the
70 Delete key to delete backwards, despite the presence (according to
71 Xlib) of a BackSpace key on the keyboard.
73 ** Interactive searching and matching case improvements.
75 Case sensitiveness in searching operations is normally controlled by
76 the variable `case-fold-search' (if non-nil, case is ignored while
77 searching). This mechanism has now been slightly improved for
78 interactive searches: if the search string (or regexp) contains
79 uppercase characters, the searching is forced to be case-sensitive,
82 The new behavior affects all functions performing interactive
83 searches, like `zap-to-char', `list-matching-lines', `tags-search'
84 etc. The incremental search facility has always behaved that way.
86 ** You can now create "indirect buffers", like in GNU Emacs. An
87 indirect buffer shares its text with another buffer ("base buffer"),
88 but has its own major mode, local variables, extents, and narrowing.
89 An indirect buffer has a name of its own, distinct from those of the
90 base buffer and all other buffers. An indirect buffer cannot itself
91 be visiting a file (though its base buffer can be). The base buffer
92 cannot itself be indirect.
94 Use (make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER NAME) to make an indirect buffer
95 named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER. If BASE-BUFFER is itself an
96 indirect buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new
99 You can make an indirect buffer current, or switch to it in a window,
100 just as you would a non-indirect buffer.
102 The function `buffer-base-buffer' returns a buffer's base buffer or
103 nil, if given an ordinary (non-indirect) buffer. The function
104 `buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect children of
107 ** User names following the tilde character can now be completed at
108 file name prompts; e.g. `C-x C-f ~hni<TAB>' will complete to
109 `~hniksic/'. To make this operation faster, a cache of user names is
110 maintained internally.
112 The new primitives available for this purpose are functions named
113 `user-name-completion' and `user-name-all-completions'.
115 ** Native widgets can be displayed in buffers.
117 The glyph system has been extended to allow the display of glyphs that
118 are implemented as native window-system widgets. Thus you can embed
119 buttons, scrollbars, combo boxes, edit fields and progress gauges in a
120 buffer. As a side effect subwindow support now works once again.
122 This support is currently only available under MS-Windows.
124 ** X-Face support is now available under MS-Windows
126 If an X-Face libary built under MS-Windows is available then XEmacs
127 will use this at build time.
129 ** The font-menu is now available under MS-Windows
131 ** MS-Windows support for selection is much more robust
133 Generally selection should now do what you would expect under
134 MS-Windows: the middle mouse button will paste your current selection
135 or the clipboard; conversions from different types of selection to the
136 clipboard can be made; the kill-ring and friends will be updated as
139 The only thing selection doesn't do is set the clipboard automatically
140 as this would break the MS-Windows model. If you want this behaviour
141 then set `selection-sets-clipboard' to t
144 * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.2
145 ==========================================
147 ** Much effort has been invested to make XEmacs Lisp faster:
149 *** Many basic lisp operations are now faster.
150 This is especially the case when running a Mule-enabled XEmacs.
152 A general overhaul of the lisp engine should produce a speedup of 1.4
153 in a Latin-1 XEmacs, and 2.1 in a Mule XEmacs. These numbers were
154 obtained running `(byte-compile "simple.el")', which should be a
155 pretty typical test of "pure" Lisp.
157 *** Lisp hash tables have been re-implemented. The Common Lisp style
158 hash table interface has been made standard, and moved from cl.el into
159 fast C code (See the section on hash tables in the XEmacs Lisp
160 Reference). A speedup factor of 3 can be expected with code that
161 makes intensive use of hash tables.
163 *** The garbage collector has been tuned, leading to a speedup of
166 *** The family of functions that iterate over lists, like `memq', and
167 `rassq', have been made a little faster (typically 1.3).
169 *** Lisp function calls are faster, by approximately a factor of two.
170 However, defining inline functions (via defsubst) still makes sense
173 *** Finally, a few functions have had dramatic performance
174 improvements. For example, `(last long-list)' is now 30 times faster.
176 Of course, your mileage will vary.
178 Many operations do not see any improvement. Surprisingly, running
179 (font-lock-fontify-buffer) does not use the Lisp engine much at all.
180 Speeding up your favorite slow operation is an excellent project to
181 improve XEmacs. Don't forget to profile!
183 ** XEmacs finally has an automated test suite!
184 Although this is not yet very sophisticated, it is already responsible
185 for several important bug fixes in XEmacs. To try it out, simply use
186 the makefile target `make check' after building XEmacs.
188 ** Hash tables have been reimplemented.
189 As was pointed out above, the standard interface to hash tables is now
190 the Common Lisp interface, as described in Common Lisp, the Language
191 (CLtL2, by Steele). The older interface (functions with names
192 containing the phrase `hashtable') will continue to work, but the
193 preferred interface now has names containing the phrase `hash-table'.
195 Here's the executive overview: create hash tables using
196 make-hash-table, and use gethash, puthash, remhash, maphash and
197 clrhash to manipulate entries in the hash table. See the (updated)
198 Lisp Reference Manual for details.
200 ** Lisp code handles circular lists much more robustly.
201 Many basic lisp functions used to loop forever when given a circular
202 list, expecting you to C-g (quit) out of the loop. Now this is more
203 likely to trigger a `circular-list' error. Printing a circular list
204 now results in something like this:
206 (let ((x (cons 'foo 'foo)))
209 => (foo ... <circular list>)
211 An extra bonus is that checking for circularities is not just
212 friendlier, but actually faster than checking for C-g.
214 ** The new form `ignore-file-errors', similar to `ignore-errors' may
215 be used as a short-hand for condition-case when you wish to ignore
216 file-related error. For example:
218 (ignore-file-errors (delete-file "foo"))
220 ** The arguments to `locate-file' are now much more "lispy". As
221 before, the usage is:
223 (locate-file FILENAME PATH-LIST &optional SUFFIXES MODE)
225 Except that SUFFIXES are now a list of strings instead of a single,
226 colon-separated string. MODE is now a symbol or a list of symbols
227 (symbols `exists', `executable', `writable', and `readable' are
228 supported) instead of an integer code. See the documentation for
231 Of course, the old form is still accepted for backward compatibility.
233 ** `translate-region' has been improved in several ways. Its TABLE
234 argument used to be a 256-character string. In addition to this, it
235 can now also be a vector or a char-table (which is useful for Mule.)
236 If TABLE a vector or a generic char-table, you can map characters to
237 strings instead of to other characters. For instance:
239 (let ((table (make-char-table 'generic)))
240 (put-char-table ?a "the letter a" table)
241 (put-char-table ?b "" table)
242 (put-char-table ?c ?\n table)
243 (translate-region (point-min) (point-max) table))
245 ** The `keywordp' function now returns non-nil only on symbols
246 interned in the global obarray. For example:
248 (keywordp (intern ":foo" [0]))
250 (keywordp (intern ":foo")) ; The same as (keywordp :foo)
253 This behaviour is compatible with other code which treats symbols
254 beginning with colon as keywords only if they are interned in the
255 global obarray. `keywordp' used to wrongly return t in both cases
258 ** The first argument to `intern-soft' may now also be a symbol, like
259 with `unintern'. If given a symbol, `intern-soft' will look for that
260 exact symbol rather than for any string. This is useful when you want
261 to check whether a specific symbol is interned in an obarray, e.g.:
266 (intern-soft (make-symbol "foo"))
269 ** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
270 `base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
271 and `base64-decode-string'.
274 * Changes in XEmacs 21.0
275 ========================
277 ** XEmacs has been unbundled into constituent installable packages.
278 See the Info documentation under "Packages" for more information.
279 See the file `etc/PACKAGES' in the distribution for a partial list of
280 packages available at the time of the 21.0 release.
282 ** XEmacs is now supported under Microsoft Windows 95/98 and Windows
283 NT operating systems. For starters, look at the XEmacs on Windows FAQ
284 at <URL:http://jagor.srce.hr/~hniksic/xemacs-on-windows-faq.txt>. To
285 discuss Windows-specific issues, subscribe to the mailing list at
286 <xemacs-nt-request@xemacs.org>.
288 ** XEmacs will now use `XEmacs' as its application class if it finds
289 any `XEmacs' resources in the resource database. Otherwise, it will
290 continue to use the `Emacs' class.
292 ** The options menu has been ported to Custom.
293 This means that each entry in the options menu acts as if you had customized
294 the corresponding variable by hand. ### WARNING: there is currently no
295 upgrading function to help you port your old options settings to the new
296 format. Consequently, if you want to modify the options for XEmacs 21, you
297 will have to set them all again through the menu, and remove the code loading
298 .xemacs-options from your .emacs.
300 ** When the Zmacs region is active, `M-x query-replace' and the other
301 replace commands now operate on the region contents only.
303 ** XEmacs now is able to choose X visuals and use private colormaps.
304 The '-visual <visualStr>' command line option or the '.EmacsVisual'
305 Xresource controls which visual XEmacs will use, and
306 '-privateColormap' or '.privateColormap' will force XEmacs to create a
307 private colormap for use. The syntax for the visual string is
308 "<visual><bitdepth>" where <visual> is one of 'StaticColor',
309 'TrueColor', 'GrayScale', 'PseudoColor' or 'DirectColor' and
310 <bitdepth> is the appropriate number of bits per pixel. If an invalid
311 or non-supported combination is entered, XEmacs attempts to find a happy
312 medium. The X creation mechanism will then determine if it needs to
313 create a colormap for use, or the presence of the private flags will
314 force it to create it.
316 ** The `imenu' package has been ported to XEmacs and is available as a
319 ** `echo-keystrokes' can now be a floating-point number, so that you
320 can set it to intervals shorter than one second.
322 (setq echo-keystrokes 0.1)
324 ** The new command `center-to-window-line' works like `recenter'
325 (bound to `C-l'), only it does not redisplay the whole display area.
327 ** The M-. command will now first search through exact tags matches,
328 and then through inexact matches, as one would expect.
330 ** The new variable `user-full-name' can be used to customize one's
331 name when using the Emacs mail and news reading facilities.
333 Normally, `user-full-name' is a function that returns the full name of
334 a user or UID, as specified by the system -- for instance,
335 (user-full-name "root") returns something like "Super-User". However,
336 when the function is called without arguments, it will return the
337 value of the `user-full-name' variable. The `user-full-name' variable
338 is initialized using the environment variable NAME and (failing that)
339 the user's system name.
341 The behavior of the `user-full-name' function with an argument
342 specified is unchanged.
344 ** The new command `M-x customize-changed-options' lets you customize
345 all the options whose default values have changed in recent Emacs
346 versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as argument,
347 and the command creates a customization buffer showing all the
348 customizable options whose default values were changed since that
351 If you don't specify a particular version number argument, then the
352 customization buffer shows all the customizable options for which
353 Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
355 ** The new command `add-log-convert' can be used to convert the
356 old-style (pre-20.3) ChangeLog buffers to new style, for
357 consistency. A reminder: if you wish to revert to old-style
358 ChangeLogs instead, customize the value of `add-log-time-format'
361 ** The new command `zap-up-to-char' is now available. It is similar
362 to `zap-to-char', except that it does not delete the searched-for
363 character. It is not bound to a key by default.
365 ** You can now store a number into a register with `C-u NUMBER C-x r n'
366 REG, increment it by INC with `C-u INC C-x r + REG' (to increment by
367 one, omit C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with `C-x r g REG'.
368 This is useful for writing keyboard macros.
370 ** The M-: command, when given a prefix argument, will now insert its
371 result to the current buffer.
373 ** The `C-h c' command, when given a prefix argument, will now insert
374 the message into the current buffer.
376 ** Horizontally split windows may now be dragged using the mouse.
377 Because of this, the dividers between vertical windows are always
378 visible. To turn it off, set `vertical-divider-always-visible-p' to
381 ** XEmacs/Mule (internationalization) changes.
383 *** Mule support now works on TTY's. Use `set-terminal-coding-system'
384 and `set-keyboard-coding-system' to specify the coding system of your
385 display and keyboard.
387 *** Egg/SJ3 input method is now officially supported. Quail and
388 Egg/Skk have been available through the generalized Leim since 20.3.
390 *** Localized Japanese menubars are available if XEmacs is built with
391 XFONTSET and either the X11 libraries are built with X_LOCALE defined
392 or the native C libraries support Japanese localization. This has
393 been available since 20.3, only it hasn't been announced before.
395 ** Jamie Zawinski's `gdb-highlight' extension is now distributed with
396 the `debug' package. gdb-highlight makes most objects printed in a
397 gdb buffer be mouse-sensitive: as text shows up in the buffer, it is
398 parsed, and objects which are recognized have context-sensitive
399 commands attached to them. To use it, add the following to `.emacs':
401 (add-hook 'gdb-mode-hook (lambda () (require 'gdb-highlight)))
403 ** The package popper.el is now included in the edit-utils package.
404 It has been greatly enhanced with respect to the one once included
405 with the ilisp package and should work well under XEmacs 21.0.
409 *** Like the old 'gnudoit' program. Gnuclient -batch now can read from stdin.
411 *** Gnuclient -batch no longer breaks off the output at the first LF.
415 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
416 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
417 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
420 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
421 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable setings and customizations.
422 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu" style
423 is still the default however.
425 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
427 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
428 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
429 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
431 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
432 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
434 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
435 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
437 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
438 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
440 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
441 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
443 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
444 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
445 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
446 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
448 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
449 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
450 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
451 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this makes a
452 practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
454 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
455 and is an alias for it.
457 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
458 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
460 ** Changes to Gnus, the XEmacs newsreader.
462 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
463 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
464 Gnus manual for the full story.
466 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
467 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
468 group, which is created automatically.
470 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
473 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
475 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
476 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
478 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
481 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
483 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
484 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
486 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
488 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
489 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
491 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
492 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
494 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
495 control over simplification.
497 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
499 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
502 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
504 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
506 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
507 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
508 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
510 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
511 `a' forces normal posting method.
513 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
516 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
519 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
520 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
522 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
525 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
527 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
529 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
530 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
532 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
533 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
535 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
537 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
540 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
541 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
543 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
544 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
546 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
548 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
550 *** Byte-compilation of user-specs now works under XEmacs.
552 ** The `dir' files are no longer essential for functioning of the Info
553 subsystem. If the `dir' file does not exist in an Info directory, the
554 relevant information will be generated on-the-fly.
556 This behavior can be customized, look for `Info-auto-generate-directory'
557 and `Info-save-auto-generated-dir' in the `info' customization group.
560 * Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.0
561 ==========================================
563 ** It is now possible to build XEmacs with support for 31-bit Lisp
564 integers (normally, Lisp integers are only 28 bits wide on 32-bit
565 machines.) Configure with --use-minimal-tagbits to test. With this
566 change, the maximum buffer size on 32-bit machines is increased from
567 128M to 1G. This setting will be made default in a future XEmacs
570 ** Specifier changes.
572 *** When instantiating a specifier, the window locale now has a higher
573 precedence than the buffer locale. This is because the window locale
574 is more specific than the buffer locale.
576 *** The new macro `let-specifier' can be used to temporarily add
577 specifications to specifiers. See the documentation for details.
579 *** The new specifiers `vertical-scrollbar-visible-p' and
580 `horizontal-scrollbar-visible-p' may be used to control scrollbar
581 visibility. Previously, the only way to remove a scrollbar was to set
582 its size to 0. This method is still supported for backward
585 *** The new specifiers `scrollbar-on-left-p' and `scrollbar-on-top-p'
586 may be used to control the position of the vertical and horizontal
587 toolbar. Previously, their position could be changed only through the
590 *** The new draggable vertical dividers between windows may be turned
591 off using the `vertical-divider-always-visible-p' specifier. When
592 this is set to nil, the vertical dividers between windows are shown
593 only when needed, and they are not draggable.
595 Other properties of the vertical dividers may be controlled using
596 `vertical-divider-shadow-thickness', `vertical-divider-line-width' and
597 `vertical-divider-spacing' specifiers, which see.
599 ** Frame focus management changes.
601 *** When the variable focus-follows-mouse is non-nil, `select-frame'
602 no longer permanently selects a different frame. The frame selection
603 is temporary and is reverted when the current command terminates, much
604 like the buffer selected by `set-buffer'. This is the same as in FSF
607 *** The new function `focus-frame' sets the window system focus to
608 FRAME (and selects it), regardless of the value of
609 `focus-follows-mouse'. Doing this is not well behaved, so be
610 absolutely sure that you want this.
612 The code that uses `select-frame' only to get the window manager focus
613 should be changed to use `set-frame-focus' instead, so that they keep
614 working when `focus-follows-mouse' is non-nil.
616 *** The special forms `save-selected-frame' and `with-selected-frame'
617 can now be used to temporarily change selected frame.
619 *** The behavior of `other-frame' command (`C-x 5 o') is unaffected by
622 ** The function `select-window' now has an optional second argument
623 NORECORD which if non-nil inhibits the recording of a buffer change.
625 ** The function `vertical-motion' now correctly handles the second,
626 optional WINDOW argument. A new third argument PIXELS, if non-nil,
627 indicates that the returned motion should be in pixels.
629 ** The new function `vertical-motion-pixels' is similar to
630 vertical-motion but takes as input a vertical motion in pixels.
632 ** The new functions window-text-area-pixel-{width,height,edges} can
633 be used to obtain information about the text-displaying area of a
636 ** The new functions `shrink-window-pixels' and `enlarge-window-pixels'
637 can be used to adjust the size of a window by a pixel amount.
639 ** The new function `window-displayed-text-pixel-height' can be used
640 to determine the height of the text actually displayed in a window.
642 ** The arithmetic comparison functions <, >, =, /= now accept a
643 variable number of arguments.
645 This means that if you want to test whether A < B < C, you can write
646 it as (< A B C) instead of (and (< A B) (< B C)). Likewise,
647 (apply #'> LIST) now tests if LIST is monotonously increasing -- and
650 ** The XEmacs hashtables now have a consistent read/print syntax.
651 This means that a hashtable will be readably printed in a
654 #s(hashtable size 2 data (key1 value1 key2 value2))
656 When XEmacs reads this form, it will create a new hashtable according
657 to description. This allows you to easily dump hashtables to files
658 using `prin1', and read them back in using `read'.
660 If `print-readably' is non-nil, a more relaxed syntax is used; for
663 #<hashtable size 2/13 data (key1 value1 key2 value2) 0x874d>
665 ** It is now possible to build XEmacs with LDAP support.
666 You will need to install a LDAP library first. The following have
668 - LDAP 3.3 from the University of Michigan
669 (get it from <URL:http://www.umich.edu/~dirsvcs/ldap/>)
670 - OpenLDAP 1.0.3 from the OpenLDAP Foundation
671 (get it from <URL:http://www.openldap.org/>)
672 - LDAP SDK 1.0 from Netscape Corp.
673 (get it from <URL:http://developer.netscape.com/>)
675 ** When profiling is in effect, a call-count of all recorded functions
676 is now calculated. This information is stored in
677 `call-count-profile-table', and is utilized by `profile-results' as
678 well as the new command `profile-call-count-results'.
680 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
681 starts with a colon, if it is interned in the standard obarray.
683 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
684 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
685 support pre-19.12 XEmacs and pre-20 GNU Emacs by explicitly setting
686 these variables to themselves.
688 ** The `concat' function no longer accepts integer arguments.
690 ** The new function `string' concatenates all its argument characters
691 and returns the resulting string. This is consistent with other
692 functions, like `list', `vector', etc.
694 ** The function `temp-directory' is now available to return the
695 directory to store temporary files. On Unix this will be obtained
696 from TMPDIR, defaulting to `/tmp'.
698 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
699 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
700 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
702 ** The `make-event' function now supports the TYPE and PLIST
703 arguments, which can be used to create various events from Lisp. See
704 the documentation for details.
706 ** `function-interactive' is a new function that returns the
707 interactive specification of a funcallable object.
709 ** The new `lmessage' function allows printing of a formatted message
710 with a particular label.
712 (lmessage 'progress "Processing... %d" counter)
714 This function is more convenient than `display-message' because it
715 automatically applies `format' to its arguments.
717 ** The new `lwarn' function, analogous to `lmessage', allows printing
718 a formatted warning, with a non-default CLASS or LABEL.
720 ** The new function `split-path' can now be used to explode the
721 components of a colon-separated search path into a list.
723 (split-path "foo:bar")
726 ** Specifiers and symbols whose value is a specifier are now allowed
727 as modeline specifications.
729 ** defcustom now accepts the keyword `:version'. Use this to specify
730 in which version of Emacs a certain variable's default value changed.
733 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
738 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options
741 ** The line number tracking in modeline is now efficient, even for
742 very large buffers. This is achieved by caching the line numbers of
743 recent buffer positions, and reusing them. This cache is used only in
744 the buffers where `line-number-mode' is in effect.
746 ** When the new GNU Malloc aka Doug Lea Malloc is available, it will
747 be used. This should result in better performance on Linux systems
750 ** The code XEmacs uses to assemble its various paths into the
751 directory hierarchy has been rewritten to support the package system.
752 Look under "Startup Paths" in the Info documentation for more
755 *** site-lisp is now longer part of the load-path by default.
756 Its use is deprecated, but you can specify --with-site-lisp=yes at the
757 configure command line to get it back.
759 *** `Info-default-directory-list' is now obsolete. If you want to
760 change the path which XEmacs uses to search for info files, set
761 `Info-directory-list' instead.