* Changes in XEmacs 21.2
========================
+** `delete-key-deletes-forward' now defaults to t.
+
+`delete-key-deletes-forward' is the variable that regulates the
+behaviour of the delete key on the systems that offer both a backspace
+and a delete key. If set to nil, the key labeled "Delete" will delete
+backward. If set to non-nil, the "Delete" key will delete forward,
+except on keyboards where a "Backspace" key is not provided.
+
+Unless our implementation has bugs, the only reason why you would want
+to set `delete-key-deletes-forward' to nil is if you want to use the
+Delete key to delete backwards, despite the presence (according to
+Xlib) of a BackSpace key on the keyboard.
+
+** Interactive searching and matching case improvements.
+
+Case sensitiveness in searching operations is normally controlled by
+the variable `case-fold-search' (if non-nil, case is ignored while
+searching). This mechanism has now been slightly improved for
+interactive searches: if the search string (or regexp) contains
+uppercase characters, the searching is forced to be case-sensitive,
+`case-fold-search'.
+
+The new behavior affects all functions performing interactive
+searches, like `zap-to-char', `list-matching-lines', `tags-search'
+etc. The incremental search facility has always behaved that way.
+
** You can now create "indirect buffers", like in GNU Emacs. An
indirect buffer shares its text with another buffer ("base buffer"),
but has its own major mode, local variables, extents, and narrowing.
cannot itself be indirect.
Use (make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER NAME) to make an indirect buffer
-named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER. If BASE-BUFFER is an indirect
-buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new buffer.
+named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER. If BASE-BUFFER is itself an
+indirect buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new
+buffer.
You can make an indirect buffer current, or switch to it in a window,
just as you would a non-indirect buffer.
-The function `buffer-base-buffer', given an indirect buffer, returns
-its base buffer. It returns nil when given an ordinary buffer (not
-indirect). `buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect
-children of a base buffer.
+The function `buffer-base-buffer' returns a buffer's base buffer or
+nil, if given an ordinary (non-indirect) buffer. The function
+`buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect children of
+a base buffer.
+
+** User names following the tilde character can now be completed at
+file name prompts; e.g. `C-x C-f ~hni<TAB>' will complete to
+`~hniksic/'. To make this operation faster, a cache of user names is
+maintained internally.
+
+The new primitives available for this purpose are functions named
+`user-name-completion' and `user-name-all-completions'.
\f
* Lisp and internal changes in XEmacs 21.2
==========================================
-** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
-`base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
-and `base64-decode-string'.
+** Much effort has been invested to make XEmacs Lisp faster:
-** Many basic lisp operations are now faster.
+*** Many basic lisp operations are now faster.
This is especially the case when running a Mule-enabled XEmacs.
A general overhaul of the lisp engine should produce a speedup of 1.4
in a Latin-1 XEmacs, and 2.1 in a Mule XEmacs. These numbers were
-obtained running (byte-compile "simple.el"), which should be a pretty
-typical test of `pure' lisp.
+obtained running `(byte-compile "simple.el")', which should be a
+pretty typical test of "pure" Lisp.
-Lisp hash tables have been re-implemented. The Common Lisp style hash
-table interface has been made standard, and moved from cl.el into fast
-C code (See the section on hash tables in the XEmacs Lisp Reference).
-A speedup factor of 3 can be expected with code that makes intensive
-use of hash tables.
+*** Lisp hash tables have been re-implemented. The Common Lisp style
+hash table interface has been made standard, and moved from cl.el into
+fast C code (See the section on hash tables in the XEmacs Lisp
+Reference). A speedup factor of 3 can be expected with code that
+makes intensive use of hash tables.
-The garbage collector has been tuned, leading to a speedup of 1.16.
+*** The garbage collector has been tuned, leading to a speedup of
+1.16.
-The family of functions that iterate over lists, like `memq', and
+*** The family of functions that iterate over lists, like `memq', and
`rassq', have been made a little faster (typically 1.3).
-Lisp function calls are faster, by approximately a factor of two.
-However, defining inline functions (via defsubst) still make sense.
+*** Lisp function calls are faster, by approximately a factor of two.
+However, defining inline functions (via defsubst) still makes sense
+for tight loops.
-And finally, a few functions have had dramatic performance
-improvements. For example, (last long-list) is now 30 times faster.
+*** Finally, a few functions have had dramatic performance
+improvements. For example, `(last long-list)' is now 30 times faster.
Of course, your mileage will vary.
Many operations do not see any improvement. Surprisingly, running
-(font-lock-refontify-buffer) does not use the Lisp engine much at all.
+(font-lock-fontify-buffer) does not use the Lisp engine much at all.
Speeding up your favorite slow operation is an excellent project to
improve XEmacs. Don't forget to profile!
for several important bug fixes in XEmacs. To try it out, simply use
the makefile target `make check' after building XEmacs.
-** New hash table implementation
+** Hash tables have been reimplemented.
As was pointed out above, the standard interface to hash tables is now
the Common Lisp interface, as described in Common Lisp, the Language
(CLtL2, by Steele). The older interface (functions with names
** Lisp code handles circular lists much more robustly.
Many basic lisp functions used to loop forever when given a circular
-list. Now this is more likely to trigger a `circular-list' error.
-Printing a circular list now results in something like this:
+list, expecting you to C-g (quit) out of the loop. Now this is more
+likely to trigger a `circular-list' error. Printing a circular list
+now results in something like this:
- (progn (setq x (cons 'foo 'foo)) (setcdr x x) x)
-==> (foo ... <circular list>)
+ (let ((x (cons 'foo 'foo)))
+ (setcdr x x)
+ x)
+ => (foo ... <circular list>)
An extra bonus is that checking for circularities is not just
-friendlier, but actually faster than checking for quit.
+friendlier, but actually faster than checking for C-g.
+
+** The new form `ignore-file-errors', similar to `ignore-errors' may
+be used as a short-hand for condition-case when you wish to ignore
+file-related error. For example:
+
+ (ignore-file-errors (delete-file "foo"))
+
+** The arguments to `locate-file' are now much more "lispy". As
+before, the usage is:
+
+ (locate-file FILENAME PATH-LIST &optional SUFFIXES MODE)
+
+Except that SUFFIXES are now a list of strings instead of a single,
+colon-separated string. MODE is now a symbol or a list of symbols
+(symbols `exists', `executable', `writable', and `readable' are
+supported) instead of an integer code. See the documentation for
+details.
+
+Of course, the old form is still accepted for backward compatibility.
+
+** `translate-region' has been improved in several ways. Its TABLE
+argument used to be a 256-character string. In addition to this, it
+can now also be a vector or a char-table (which is useful for Mule.)
+If TABLE a vector or a generic char-table, you can map characters to
+strings instead of to other characters. For instance:
+
+ (let ((table (make-char-table 'generic)))
+ (put-char-table ?a "the letter a" table)
+ (put-char-table ?b "" table)
+ (put-char-table ?c ?\n table)
+ (translate-region (point-min) (point-max) table))
+
+** The `keywordp' function now returns non-nil only on symbols
+interned in the global obarray. For example:
+
+ (keywordp (intern ":foo" [0]))
+ => nil
+ (keywordp (intern ":foo")) ; The same as (keywordp :foo)
+ => t
+
+This behaviour is compatible with other code which treats symbols
+beginning with colon as keywords only if they are interned in the
+global obarray. `keywordp' used to wrongly return t in both cases
+above.
+
+** The first argument to `intern-soft' may now also be a symbol, like
+with `unintern'. If given a symbol, `intern-soft' will look for that
+exact symbol rather than for any string. This is useful when you want
+to check whether a specific symbol is interned in an obarray, e.g.:
+
+ (intern "foo")
+ (intern-soft "foo")
+ => foo
+ (intern-soft (make-symbol "foo"))
+ => nil
+
+** Functions for decoding base64 encoding are now available; see
+`base64-encode-region', `base64-encode-string', `base64-decode-region'
+and `base64-decode-string'.
\f
* Changes in XEmacs 21.0
** When the Zmacs region is active, `M-x query-replace' and the other
replace commands now operate on the region contents only.
-** Using the new `-private' option, you can make XEmacs use a private
-colormap.
+** XEmacs now is able to choose X visuals and use private colormaps.
+The '-visual <visualStr>' command line option or the '.EmacsVisual'
+Xresource controls which visual XEmacs will use, and
+'-privateColormap' or '.privateColormap' will force XEmacs to create a
+private colormap for use. The syntax for the visual string is
+"<visual><bitdepth>" where <visual> is one of 'StaticColor',
+'TrueColor', 'GrayScale', 'PseudoColor' or 'DirectColor' and
+<bitdepth> is the appropriate number of bits per pixel. If an invalid
+or non-supported combination is entered, XEmacs attempts to find a happy
+medium. The X creation mechanism will then determine if it needs to
+create a colormap for use, or the presence of the private flags will
+force it to create it.
** The `imenu' package has been ported to XEmacs and is available as a
package.
It has been greatly enhanced with respect to the one once included
with the ilisp package and should work well under XEmacs 21.0.
+** Gnuserv changes
+
+*** Like the old 'gnudoit' program. Gnuclient -batch now can read from stdin.
+
+*** Gnuclient -batch no longer breaks off the output at the first LF.
+
** C mode changes
*** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
projects / chise / xemacs-chise.git.1 / blobdiff