NEWS

GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.

Copyright (C) 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.

Please send Emacs bug reports to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.
If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.

This file is about changes in Emacs version 23.

See files NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18, and NEWS.1-17
for changes in older Emacs versions.

You can narrow news to a specific version by calling `view-emacs-news'
with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.


Temporary note:
 +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
 --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
so we will look at it and add it to the manual.


* Installation Changes in Emacs 23.2

** New configure options for Emacs developers
These are not new features; only the configure flags are new.

*** --enable-profiling builds Emacs with profiling enabled.
This might not work on all platforms.

*** --enable-checking[=OPTIONS] builds emacs with extra runtime checks.

---
** `make install' now consistently ignores umask, creating a
world-readable install.

* Changes in Emacs 23.2

** New completion-style `initials' to complete M-x lch to list-command-history.

** Unibyte sessions are declared obsolete.
I.e. the use of the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE, or command line
arguments --unibyte, --multibyte, --no-multibyte, and --no-unibyte
is deprecated.  Similarly for custom-izing enable-multibyte-characters, or
setting default-enable-multibyte-characters.

** The default value of `trash-directory' has changed to nil, which
means that `move-file-to-trash' trashes files according to
freedesktop.org specifications, the same method used by the Gnome,
KDE, and XFCE desktops.  (This change has no effect on Windows, which
uses `system-move-file-to-trash' for trashing.)

+++
** Emacs frames can be maximized.
The command line arguments -mm/--maximized and the value maximized to the
frame parameter fullscreen makes the Emacs frame maximized.

+++
** New frame parameter sticky makes Emacs frames sticky in virtual desktops.

** The pointer now becomes invisible when typing.
Customize make-pointer-invisible to turn it off.

---
** On MS-Windows, `display-time' now displays the system load average
as well as the time, as it does on GNU and Unix.

** Killing a buffer with a running process now asks a confirmation.
You can remove this query in two ways: either removing
`process-kill-buffer-query-function' from `kill-buffer-query-functions' or
setting the appropriate process flag with `set-process-query-on-exit-flag'.

+++
** If `select-active-regions' is t, any active region automatically
becomes the primary selection (for interaction with other window
applications).  If you enable this, you might want to bind
`mouse-yank-primary' to Mouse-2.

** The variable `load-in-progress' won't get corrupted by binding it
with `let'.  In certain situations, loading an Emacs Lisp file from
source while in the midst of loading another file (e.g., with
`require' or `autoload') could cause the value of `load-in-progress'
to be corrupted once the outer load completed.  Most code doesn't care
about this, but some (like c-mode) may check it.

** When `save-interprogram-paste-before-kill' is non-nil, emacs will not
clobber the the interprogram paste when something is killed in it by
saving the former in the `kill-ring' before the latter.

** When `kill-do-not-save-duplicates' is non-nil, identical subsequent
kills are not duplicated in the `kill-ring'.

** File-local variable changes

*** Specifying a minor mode as a local variables enables that mode,
unconditionally.  The previous behavior, toggling the mode, was
neither reliable nor generally desirable.

*** New commands for adding and removing file-local variables:
`add-file-local-variable', `delete-file-local-variable',
`add-file-local-variable-prop-line', and
`delete-file-local-variable-prop-line'.

*** New commands for adding and removing directory-local variables,
and copying them to and from file-local variable lists:
`add-dir-local-variable', `delete-dir-local-variable',
`copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals',
`copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals-prop-line' and
`copy-file-locals-to-dir-locals'.

** New coding system `utf-8-hfs' is available in
international/ucs-normalize.el.  It is suitable for
default-file-name-coding-system on Mac OS X.


* Editing Changes in Emacs 23.2

+++
** The default value for `blink-matching-paren-distance' has been increased.


* Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.2

** .calc.el and .abbrev_defs obey user-emacs-directory.

** Calc graphing commands (`g f' etc.) now work on MS-Windows,
if you have the native Windows port of Gnuplot version 3.8 or later
installed.

** FIXME mail-user-agent change
This probably affects a lot of documentation.

** FIXME gdb-mi

** Info

*** The new command `Info-virtual-index' bound to "I" displays a menu of
matched topics found in the index.

*** The new command `info-finder' replaces finder.el with a virtual Info
manual that generates an Info file which gives the same information
through a menu structure.

+++
** New connection methods in Tramp.
The new connection method "rsyncc" has been introduced.  On systems
which support GVFS-Fuse, Tramp offers also the new connection methods
"dav", "davs", "obex" and "synce".

+++
** Autorevert Tail mode
Autorevert Tail mode works now for remote files.

** VC and related modes

*** When a file is not found, VC will not try to check it out of RCS anymore.

*** vc-git changes

**** The new variable vc-git-add-signoff can be used to add a
Signed-off-by line when committing.

**** vc-dir displays the stash status

*** log-edit-strip-single-file-name controls whether or not single filenames
are stripped when copying text from the ChangeLog to the *VC-Log* buffer.

** Calendar and diary

*** The fancy diary display enables view-mode.

---
*** The command `calendar-current-date' accepts an optional argument
giving an offset from today.

** Desktop

---
*** The default value for `desktop-buffers-not-to-save' is nil.
This means Desktop will try restoring all buffers, when you restart
your Emacs session.  Also, `desktop-buffers-not-to-save' is only
effective for buffers that have no associated file.  If you want to
exempt buffers that do correspond to files, customize the value of
`desktop-files-not-to-save' instead.

** Miscellaneous

*** The new command `async-shell-command' bound globally to `M-&' executes
the command asynchronously without the need to manually add ampersand to
the end of the command.  Its output appears in the buffer `*Async Shell
Command*'.

---
*** Elint now uses compilation-mode, and recognizes more built-in
functions and variables.


* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.2

** js.el is a new major mode for JavaScript files.


* Lisp changes in Emacs 23.2

** You can control which binding is preferentially shown in menus and
docstrings by adding a `:advertised-binding' property to the corresponding
command's symbol.  That property can hold a single binding or a list
of bindings.

** New macro with-silent-modifications to tweak text properties without
affecting the buffer's modification state.
** All the default-FOO variables that hold the default value of the FOO
variable, are now declared obsolete.

** read-key is a function halfway between read-event and read-key-sequence.
It reads a single key, but obeys input and escape sequence decoding.

** start-process-shell-command and start-file-process-shell-command
now only take a single `command' argument.

** The variable `process-file-side-effects' shall be bound to nil, if
a `process-file' call does not change a remote file.  By this, file
name handlers like Tramp can apply optimizations.

** Hash tables have a new printed representation that is readable.
The feature `hashtable-print-readable' identifies this new
functionality.

** Functions performing Unicode normalization are added.  They are:
ucs-normalize-NFD-region, ucs-normalize-NFD-string,
ucs-normalize-NFC-region, ucs-normalize-NFC-string,
ucs-normalize-NFKD-region, ucs-normalize-NFKD-string,
ucs-normalize-NFKC-region, ucs-normalize-NFKC-string,
ucs-normalize-HFS-NFD-region, ucs-normalize-HFS-NFD-string,
ucs-normalize-HFS-NFC-region, ucs-normalize-HFS-NFC-string.

** completion-annotate-function specifies how to compute annotations
for completions displayed in *Completions*.

+++
** Face aliases can now be marked as obsolete, using the macro
`define-obsolete-face-alias'.

---
** Changing the file-names generated by byte-compilation by redefining
the function `byte-compile-dest-file' before loading bytecomp.el is obsolete.
Instead, customize byte-compile-dest-file-function.


* Installation Changes in Emacs 23.1

** The default X toolkit is now Gtk+, rather than Lucid.
The configure option `--with-gtk' has been removed.  Gtk is now the
default toolkit, but you can use --with-x-toolkit=gtk if necessary.

** New font code.
Fonts are handled by new code capable of dealing with multiple font
backends.  This uses the freetype and fontconfig libraries.

*** Emacs now accepts font names supplied in the fontconfig format
(e.g. "monospace-12:bold") and GTK format (e.g. "Monospace Bold 12").

*** Added support for local fonts (fonts installed on the machine
where Emacs is running).

*** Added support for the Xft library for antialiasing.

*** Added support for the otf library for complex text layout by
OpenType fonts.

*** Added support for the m17n library for text shaping.

** Changes to image support

*** configure now checks for libgif before libungif when searching for
a GIF library.

*** Emacs now supports the SVG image format through librsvg2.

*** Emacs now supports multi-page TIFF images.

** New NeXTSTEP-based port
This provides support for GNUstep (via the GNUstep libraries) and Mac
OS X (via the Cocoa libraries).

Specify --with-ns to configure for this.  By default, a self-contained
app will be built (containing all lisp).  To install/share lisp with
other emacsen (e.g. X11 build) use --disable-ns-self-contained.  See
nextstep/README and nextstep/INSTALL in the Emacs source directory.

** Mac OS X is no longer supported via Carbon.
Use the NeXTSTEP port, described above.

** The new configuration option "--with-dbus" enables D-Bus language
bindings for Emacs.

** Support for many obsolete platforms has been removed.
See the list at the end of etc/MACHINES for details.

*** Support for systems without alloca has been removed.

*** Support for Sun windows has been removed.

*** The `emacstool' utility has been removed.

** The following platforms will be removed in a future Emacs version:
If you are still using Emacs on one of these platforms, please email
emacs-devel@gnu.org to inform the Emacs developers.

*** Old GNU/Linux systems based on libc version 5.

*** Old FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD systems based on the COFF
    executable format.

*** Solaris versions 2.6 and below.

*** Solaris on IBM RS6000 machines.

*** UNIX System V (the original SysV, not later platforms based on it).

*** Unixware on non-x86 machines.

*** Platforms not supporting shared libraries (i.e., requiring the
NO_SHARED_LIBS compilation flag).

** The configure options `--with-gcc', `--without-gcc' have been removed.
Configure will use gcc by default.  Set the CC environment variable if
you need control over which C compiler is used.

** The refcards are now shipped as PDF files.

** The manuals are now licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.3,
or any later version.

** Emacs 23 comes with a new set of default icons.
Various resolutions are available as etc/images/icons/hicolor/*/apps/emacs.png.
The Emacs 22 icon is available as `emacs22.png' in the same location.

* Changes in Emacs 23.1

** Improved X Window System support

*** Emacs now supports using both X displays and ttys in one session.
With an Emacs server active (M-x server-start), `emacsclient -t'
creates a tty frame connected to the running emacs server.  You can
use any number of different ttys.  `emacsclient -c' creates a new X11
frame on the current $DISPLAY (or a tty frame if $DISPLAY is not set).
There may be problems if a display exits unexpectedly and Emacs is compiled
with Gtk+, see etc/PROBLEMS.

You can test for the presence of this feature in your Lisp code by
testing for the `multi-tty' feature.

*** Emacs starts in the background, as a daemon, when given the
--daemon command line argument.  It disconnects from the terminal and
starts the server.  Clients can connect and create graphical or
terminal frames using emacsclient.

**** emacsclient starts emacs in daemon mode and connects to it when
--alternate-editor="" is used (or when the evironment variable
ALTERNATE_EDITOR is set to "") and emacsclient cannot connect to an
emacs server.

*** The new command close-display-connection closes a connection to a
remote display.  There are some bugs for Gtk+.  See etc/PROBLEMS.

*** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
You can embed Emacs in another application on X11.  The new command line
option --parent-id is used to pass the parent window id to Emacs.  See
http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html
for details about XEmbed.

*** Emacs can now set the frame opacity.
The opacity of a frame can be controlled by setting the `alpha' frame
parameter.  This only takes effect on a compositing window manager for
the X Window System, such as Compiz, Beryl and Compiz Fusion, on Mac
OS X, or on Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows.

The alpha parameter should be an integer between 0 (transparent) and
100 (opaque), or a float number between 0.0 and 1.0.  It can also be a
cons cell (ACTIVE . INACTIVE), where ACTIVE is the opacity of an
active frame and INACTIVE is the opacity of non-active frames.

The variable `frame-alpha-lower-limit' defines a lower bound for the
opacity; the default is 20.

** Internationalization changes

*** The Emacs character set is now a superset of Unicode.
(It has about four times the code space, which should be plenty).

The internal encoding used for buffers and strings is now
Unicode-based and called `utf-8-emacs' (`emacs-internal' is an alias
for this).  This encoding is backward-compatible with Unicode's UTF-8
encoding.  The internal encoding previously used by Emacs,
`emacs-mule', is still available for reading and writing files.

During byte-compilation, Emacs 23 uses `utf-8-emacs' to write files.
As a result, byte-compiled files containing non-ASCII characters can't
be read by earlier versions of Emacs.  Files compiled by Emacs 20, 21,
or 22 are loaded correctly as `emacs-mule' (whether or not they
contain multibyte characters).  This takes somewhat more time, so it
may be worth recompiling existing .elc files which don't need to be
shared with older Emacsen.

*** There are new coding systems/aliases; see M-x list-coding-systems.

*** There is a new charset implementation with many new charsets.
See M-x list-character-sets.  New charsets can be defined conveniently
as tables of unicodes.

*** There are new language environments for Chinese-GBK,
Chinese-GB18030, Khmer, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu,
Sinhala, and TaiViet.

*** The minor modes unify-8859-on-encoding-mode and
unify-8859-on-decoding-mode are obsolete.

*** `ucs-insert' is bound to `C-x 8 RET' and in addition to hex numbers
accepts numbers in hash notation (e.g. #o21430 for octal, or #10r8984 for
decimal).  It also accepts Unicode character names with completion.

*** The `cyrillic-translit' input method supports many new characters.
Common typographical characters available from Unicode were added to
`cyrillic-translit': punctuation marks, accented characters, fractions,
and others.

** Emacs now supports serial port access on GNU/Linux, Unix, and
Windows.  The new command `serial-term' starts an interactive terminal
on a serial port.  The serial port can be configured at runtime with
the mode-line mouse menu.

** Menu Bar changes

*** In the Options menu, the "Set Default Font" item applies the
selected font to the `default' face on all frames, not just the
current frame.  Furthermore, if Emacs is compiled with both GTK and
Fontconfig support, the "Set Default Font" item uses the GTK font
selection dialog instead of an Emacs pop-up menu.

*** The font setting chosen by "Set Default Font" is saved if the
"Save Options" item is used.

*** The Tools menu contains a new Encryption/Decryption submenu.
This contains commands provided by EasyPG, the newly-included
interface to GnuPG (see New Modes and Packages).

*** In the Options menu, the "Truncate Long Lines in the Buffer" entry
has been replaced with a submenu offering three different ways to
handle long lines: truncation, continuation at the window edge, and
the new word wrapping behavior (see Editing Changes, below).

*** Improvements to menus for major and minor modes
More major and minor modes now have a mode specific menu, and existing
mode menus have been improved to include more functionality.

** Mode-line changes

*** The mode-line displays a `@', instead of `-', if the
default-directory for the current buffer is on a remote machine.

*** The mode-line displays a mode menu when mouse-1 is clicked on a
minor mode, in the same way as it already did for major modes.

*** The `mode-line-emphasis' face is used to highlight certain
mode-line information (e.g. waiting for a VC command to finish).

*** The mode-line tooltips have been improved to provide more details.

*** The VC, line/colum number and minor mode indicators on the mode
line are now interactive: mouse-1 can be used on them to pop up a menu.

** File deletion can make use of the Recycle Bin or system Trash folder.
Set `delete-by-moving-to-trash' non-nil to use this.  Deleted files
and directories will then be sent to the Recycle Bin on Windows, and
to `trash-directory' on other systems.

** Directory-local variables can now be defined.
By default, Emacs looks in .dir-locals.el for directory-local
variables.  For more information, see `dir-locals-set-directory-class'
and `dir-locals-set-class-variables'.

** Emacs can now use `auth-source' for authentication.
`smtpmail' and `url' (Tramp and Gnus also) use `auth-source' to obtain
login names and passwords.  The match, if found, is reported
in *Messages* with the password blanked out.

** `where-is-preferred-modifier' can specify your favorite modifier.


* Startup Changes in Emacs 23.1

** The option `inhibit-startup-screen' (with aliases to old names
`inhibit-splash-screen' and `inhibit-startup-message') doesn't inhibit
display of the initial message in the *scratch* buffer.  If you don't
want to display the initial message in the *scratch* buffer at startup,
you can set the option `initial-scratch-message' to nil.

** New user option `initial-buffer-choice' specifies what to display
after starting Emacs: startup screen, *scratch* buffer, visiting a
file or directory.

** New alias `argv' for `command-line-args-left'
This is a convenience alias, so that one can write `(pop argv)'
inside of --eval command line arguments in order to access
following arguments.

** The abbrev file is no longer read at startup in batch mode.

** Emacs now supports invocation by an X session manager.
It can save a session and restore it later.  See the documentation of
the functions `emacs-session-save' and `emacs-session-restore'.
(Actually, this feature was introduced with Emacs 22, but it was not
documented.)

* Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1

** In Dired, `dired-flag-garbage-files' is rebound from `&' to `%&'
on the regexp command prefix map.

** In Dired-x, all command guesses for ! are now added to the default
list accessible by M-n instead of pushing all guesses temporarily into
the history list.

** In Isearch mode, a special case of typing `C-w' at the beginning of
the minibuffer that toggles word search (i.e. using key sequences
`C-s RET C-w' or `C-s M-e C-w') is obsolete.  You can use the global key
`M-s w' to start word search, or type `M-s w' in Isearch mode to
toggle word search.  To start nonincremental word search you can now use
`M-s w RET' and `M-s w C-r RET' instead of `C-s RET C-w' and `C-r RET C-w'.

** In Info, `Info-search' is unbound from `M-s' to allow using `M-s w'
for word search as well as other search commands from the global prefix
key `M-s'.  `Info-search' is still bound to `s', and also incremental
search commands `C-s', `C-M-s', `C-r', `C-M-r' are available for searching
through multiple Info nodes, together with their nonincremental versions
`C-s RET', `C-r RET', `C-M-s RET', `C-M-r RET', `M-s w RET'.

** In Text mode, `center-line' and `center-paragraph' are rebound from
`M-s' and `M-S' to global keys `M-o M-s' and `M-o M-S' on the global
prefix map `M-o', which is intended for such formatting commands.

** The following input methods were removed in Emacs 22.2, but this was
not advertised: danish-alt-postfix, esperanto-alt-postfix,
finnish-alt-postfix, german-alt-postfix, icelandic-alt-postfix,
norwegian-alt-postfix, scandinavian-alt-postfix, spanish-alt-postfix,
and swedish-alt-postfix.  Use the versions without "alt-", which are
identical.


* Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1

** The C-n and C-p line-motion commands now move by screen lines,
taking continued lines and variable-width characters into account.
Setting `line-move-visual' to nil reverts this to the previous
behavior (i.e., motion by logical lines based on buffer contents
alone).

** C-x C-c now invokes `save-buffers-kill-terminal', and C-z now
invokes `suspend-frame'.  These changes are for compatibility with the
new multi-tty support (see `Improved X Window System support' above).

** Mark changes

*** Transient Mark mode is now on by default.

*** mark-even-if-inactive now defaults to t

*** When Transient Mark mode is on, C-SPC C-SPC pushes a mark without
activating it.

*** When Transient Mark mode is on, M-q now fills the region if the
region is active.  Otherwise, it fills the current paragraph.

*** When Transient Mark mode is on, M-$ now checks spelling of the
region if the region is active.  Otherwise, it checks spelling of the
word at point.

*** When Transient Mark mode is on, TAB now indents the region if the
region is active.

*** The variable `use-empty-active-region' controls whether an empty
active region in Transient Mark mode should make commands operate on
that empty region.

** Temporarily active regions

*** The new variable shift-select-mode, non-nil by default, controls
shift-selection.  When Shift Select mode is on, shift-translated
motion keys (e.g. S-left and S-down) activate and extend a temporary
region, similar to mouse-selection.

*** Temporarily active regions, created using shift-selection or
mouse-selection, are not necessarily deactivated in the next command.
They are only deactivated after point motion commands that are not
shift-translated, or after commands that would ordinarily deactivate
the mark in Transient Mark mode (e.g., any command that modifies the
buffer).

** Minibuffer and completion changes

*** Emacs may ask for confirmation before opening a non-existent file
or buffer.  By default, Emacs requests confirmation if you type RET
immediately after TAB, and the resulting input is not an existing file
or buffer; this usually happens when the minibuffer input did not
complete far enough and you entered RET by mistake.  In that case,
Emacs puts the message "[Confirm]" in the minibuffer; type RET again
to create the file or buffer.

The new variable confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer determines whether
Emacs asks for confirmation.  The default value is `after-completion'.
If you change it to t, Emacs always asks for confirmation; if you
change it to nil, Emacs never asks for confirmation.

*** The rules for performing completion have been changed.
When generating completion alternatives, Emacs now takes the
minibuffer text after point, if any, into account: this text is
treated as a substring of the remaining part of the completion
alternative (i.e., the part not matched by the minibuffer text before
point).  If no completion alternatives are found this way, Emacs
attempts to perform partial-completion.  If still no completion
alternatives are found, we fall back on the Emacs 22 rules for
performing completion.

The new variable `completion-styles' can be customized to choose your
favorite completion style.

*** When M-n in the minibuffer reaches the end of the list of defaults,
it adds the completion list to the end, so next M-n continues putting
completion items to the minibuffer.  The same principle applies to
incremental search commands as well: C-s or C-M-s starts searching
the default values and after the end of defaults they continue
searching minibuffer completion items.

*** Minibuffer input of shell commands now comes with completion.

*** In the `C-x d' (Dired) prompt, typing M-n gives the visited file
name of the current buffer.

*** In the M-! (shell-command) prompt, M-n provides some default commands.
These are guessed using the file extension of the current file, based
on the file-handlers specified in the operating system's `mailcap'
file.  The ! command in Dired (dired-do-shell-command) works
similarly, using the file displayed on the current line.

*** A list of regexp default values is available via M-n for `occur',
`keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many'.  This list includes the active
region in transient-mark-mode, the word under the cursor, the last Isearch
regexp, the last Isearch string and the last replacement regexp.

*** When enable-recursive-minibuffers is non-nil, operations which use
switch-to-buffer (such as C-x b and C-x C-f) do not fail any more when
used in a minibuffer or a dedicated window.  Instead, they fallback on
using pop-to-buffer, which will use some other window.  This change
has no effect when enable-recursive-minibuffers is nil (the default).

*** Isearch started in the minibuffer searches in the minibuffer history.
Reverse Isearch commands (C-r, C-M-r) search in previous minibuffer
history elements, and forward Isearch commands (C-s, C-M-s) search in
next history elements.  When the reverse search reaches the first history
element, it wraps to the last history element, and the forward search
wraps to the first history element.  When the search is terminated, the
history element containing the search string becomes the current.

*** The variable read-file-name-completion-ignore-case overrides
completion-ignore-case for file name completion.

*** The variable read-buffer-completion-ignore-case overrides
completion-ignore-case for buffer name completion.

*** The new command `minibuffer-force-complete' chooses one of the
possible completions, rather than stopping at the common prefix.

*** If `completion-auto-help' is `lazy', Emacs shows the completions
buffer only on the second attempt to complete.  This was already
supported in `partial-completion-mode'.

** Face changes

*** S-down-mouse-1 now pops up a menu for changing the font and text
size of the default face in the current buffer.  The face is changed
via face remapping (see Lisp changes, below).

*** New commands to change the default face size in the current buffer.
To increase it, type `C-x C-+' or `C-x C-='.  To decrease it, type
`C-x C--'.  To restore the default (global) face size, type `C-x C-0'.
These work via Text Scale mode, a new minor mode.

The final key in the above commands may be repeated without the
leading `C-x', e.g. `C-x C-= C-= C-=' increases the face height by
three steps.  Each step scales the height of the default face by the
value of the variable `text-scale-mode-step'.

*** The commands buffer-face-mode and buffer-face-set can be used to
remap the default face in the current buffer.  See "Buffer Face mode",
under New Modes and Packages.

** Primary selection changes

*** You can disable kill ring commands from accessing the primary
selection by setting `x-select-enable-primary' to nil.

** Continuation lines can now be wrapped at word boundaries
(word-wrapping).  This is controlled by the new per-buffer variable
`word-wrap'.  Word wrapping does not take place if continuation lines
are not shown, e.g. if truncate-lines is non-nil.  The most convenient
way to enable word-wrapping is using the new minor mode Visual Line
mode; in addition to setting `word-wrap' to t, this rebinds some
editing commands to work on screen lines rather than text lines.  See
New Modes and Packages, below.

** Window management changes

*** truncate-partial-width-windows now accepts integer values, which
specify a minimum window width for partial-width windows, below which
lines are truncated.  The default has been changed to 50.

*** The new command balance-windows-area balances windows both
vertically and horizontally.

*** pop-to-buffer now always sets input focus when the popped-to window
is on a different frame.

** Miscellaneous changes:

*** C-l is bound to the new command recenter-top-bottom, rather than recenter.
This moves the current line to window center, top and bottom on
successive invocations.

*** scroll-preserve-screen-position also preserves the column position.

*** If `yank-pop-change-selection' is t, rotating the kill ring also
updates the selection or clipboard to the current yank, just as M-w
would do so with the text it copies to the kill ring.

*** C-M-% now shows replacement as it would look in the buffer, with
`\N' and `\&' substituted according to the match.  Old behavior can be
restored by customizing `query-replace-show-replacement'.

*** The command shell prompts for the default directory, when it is
called with a prefix and the default directory is a remote file name.
This is because some file name handlers (like ange-ftp) are not able to
run processes remotely.

*** The new command kill-matching-buffers kills buffers whose name
matches a regexp.

*** The value of comment-style now defaults to `indent'.
Thefore, comment-start markers are inserted at the current indentation
of the region to comment, rather than the leftmost column.

*** The new commands `pp-macroexpand-expression' and
`pp-macroexpand-last-sexp' pretty-print macro expansions.

*** The new command `set-file-modes' allows to set file's mode bits.
The mode bits can be specified in symbolic notation, like with GNU
Coreutils, in addition to an octal number.  `chmod' is a new
convenience alias for this function.

*** `next-error-recenter' specifies how next-error should recenter the
visited source file.  Its value can be a number (for example, 0 for
top line, -1 for bottom line), or nil for no recentering.

*** When typing in a password in the echo area, C-y yanks the current
kill into the password.

*** Tooltip frame parameters `font' and `color' in `tooltip-frame-parameters'
are ignored.  Customize the `tooltip' face instead.

*** `mkdir' is a new convenience alias for `make-directory'.

* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1

** Auto Composition Mode is a minor mode that composes characters
automatically when they are displayed.  It is globally on by default.
It uses `auto-composition-function' (default `auto-compose-chars').

** Bubbles, a new game, is similar to SameGame.

** Buffer Face mode is a minor mode for remapping the default face in
the current buffer.  The variable `buffer-face-mode-face' specifies
the face to remap to.  The command `buffer-face-set' prompts for a
face name, sets `buffer-face-mode-face' to it, and enables
buffer-face-mode.  See "Face changes", under Editing Changes, for a
description of face remapping.

** butterfly flips the desired bit on the drive platter.
See http://xkcd.com/378/

** bug-reference.el provides clickable links to bug reports.

** dbus.el provides D-Bus language bindings.
D-Bus is an inter-process communication mechanism for applications
residing on the same host.  See the manual for details.

** DocView mode allows viewing of PDF, PostScript and DVI documents.
One can also search for a regular expression in the document.  For
details, see the commentary in doc-view.el.

PDF and DVI files are now opened in Doc View mode by default.

In Postcript mode, C-c C-c launches Doc View minor mode for viewing
the postscript file.

** EasyPG provides an interface to the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG).
It includes a GnuPG keyring browser, cryptographic operations on
regions and files, and automatic encryption of *.gpg files.  For
details, see the EasyPG Assistant User's Manual.

** json.el is a library for parsing and generating JSON
(JavaScript Object Notation), a lightweight data-interchange format.

** linum.el is a new minor mode to display line numbers for the
current buffer.

** mairix.el is an interface to mairix, a free tool for indexing and
searching locally stored mail.  It allows you to query mairix and
display the search results with Rmail, Gnus and VM.  Note that there
is an existing Gnus back end, nnmairix.el, which should be used with
Maildir/MH setups.

** minibuffer-depth-indicate-mode shows the minibuffer depth in the prompt.

** nXML Mode
This is a new mode for editing XML documents.  It allows a schema to
be associated with the XML document being edited, using Relax NG as
the schema language.  The schema is used to provide two key features:

*** Continuous validation.  nXML validates as you type, highlighting
any invalid parts of your document.

*** Completion.  nXML can assist you in entering an element name,
attribute name or data value by using information about what is
allowed by the schema in that context.

** proced.el provides a Dired-like interface for operating on
processes.  Proced makes an Emacs buffer containing a listing of the
current processes.  You can use the normal Emacs commands to move
around in this buffer, and special Proced commands to operate on the
processes listed.  It is currently only functional on GNU/Linux,
MS-Windows and Solaris.

** Remember Mode is a mode for jotting down things to remember.
Notes can be saved to a Diary file.  For details, see the Remember
Manual.

** RST mode is a major mode for editing reStructuredText files.

** Ruby mode is a major mode for Ruby files.

** Visual Line mode provides support for editing by visual lines.
It turns on word-wrapping in the current buffer, and rebinds C-a, C-e,
and C-k to commands that operate by visual lines instead of logical
lines.  This is a more reliable replacement for longlines-mode.
This can also be turned on using the menu bar, via
Options -> Line Wrapping in this Buffer -> Word Wrap

** xesam.el is an implementation of Xesam, an interface to (desktop)
search engines like Beagle, Strigi, and Tracker.  The Xesam API
requires D-Bus for communication.

** zeroconf.el offers service discovery and service publishing
interfaces according to the zeroconf specification.  It communicates
with Avahi, a zeroconf implementation, via D-Bus messages on systems
which have installed this software.

** There is a new `whitespace' package.
(The pre-existing one has been renamed to `old-whitespace'.)
Now, besides reporting bogus blanks, the whitespace package has a
minor mode and a global minor mode to visualize blanks (TAB, (HARD)
SPACE and NEWLINE).  The visualization is made via faces and/or display
table.  It can also indicate lines that extend beyond a given column,
trailing blanks, and empty lines at the start or end of a buffer.
See `whitespace-style' for more details.  The `whitespace-action' option
specifies what to do when a buffer is visited, killed, or written.


* Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1

** Abbrev has been rewritten in Elisp and extended with more flexibility.

*** New functions: abbrev-get, abbrev-put, abbrev-table-get, abbrev-table-put,
    abbrev-table-p, abbrev-insert, abbrev-table-menu.

*** Special hook `abbrev-expand-functions' obsoletes `pre-abbrev-expand-hook'.

*** `make-abbrev-table', `define-abbrev', `define-abbrev-table' all take
    extra arguments for arbitrary properties.

*** New variable `abbrev-minor-mode-table-alist'.

*** `local-abbrev-table' can hold a list of abbrev-tables.

*** Abbrevs have now the following special properties:
    `:count', `:system', `:enable-function', `:case-fixed'.

*** Abbrev-tables have now the following special properties:
    `:parents', `:case-fixed', `:enable-function', `:regexp',
    `abbrev-table-modiff'.

** Apropos

*** `apropos-library' describes the elements defined in a given library.

*** Set `apropos-compact-layout' is you want a more compact (but wider) layout.

** Archive Mode has basic support to browse Rar archives.
Note, however, that the free version of the unrar command only handles
versions 1 and 2 of the Rar format.

** BibTeX mode

*** New command `bibtex-initialize' (re)initializes BibTeX buffers.

*** New `bibtex-entry-format' options `whitespace', `braces', and
`string', disabled by default.

*** New variable `bibtex-cite-matcher-alist' contains rules to
identify cited keys in BibTeX entries, used by `bibtex-find-crossref'.

*** Command `bibtex-url' allows multiple URLs per entry.

** Calendar and diary

*** There is a new date style, `iso', essentially year/month/day.
The variable `european-calendar-style' is obsolete - use `calendar-date-style'.
Similarly, the commands `american-calendar' and `european-calendar'
should be replaced by `calendar-set-date-style'.

*** The calendar namespace has been rationalized.
All functions and variables now begin with a `calendar-', `diary-', or
`holiday-' prefix.  The various calendar systems have secondary
prefixes, eg `calendar-french-'.  The old names you are likely to use
directly still exist, for the time being, as aliases, but please start
using the new names.

*** The whitespace in the calendar layout can be customized.
See the variables:
calendar-left-margin, calendar-intermonth-spacing, calendar-column-width,
calendar-day-header-width, and calendar-day-digit-width.

*** Text (e.g. ISO weeks) can be displayed between the calendar months.
See the variables calendar-intermonth-header and calendar-intermonth-text.

*** The function `holiday-chinese' computes holidays on the Chinese calendar.
It has been used to add items to the list `holiday-oriental-holidays'.

*** `diary-remind' accepts a negative number -DAYS as a shorthand for
the list (1 2 ... DAYS).

** Change Log mode

*** The new command C-c C-f (change-log-find-file) finds the file
associated with the current log entry.

*** The new command C-c C-c (change-log-goto-source) goes to the
source code associated with a log entry.

** Compile and grep modes

*** The mode-line entry for the *compilation* and *grep* buffer is color coded.
It has different colors for to show that: (a) the command is still
running, (b) successful completion, (c) error.