NEWS

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

Copyright (C) 2007 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.


* About external Lisp packages


* Installation Changes in Emacs 23.1

** The default X toolkit is now Gtk+, rather than Lucid.

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


* Changes in Emacs 23.1

** The refcards are now shipped as PDF files.

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

** If you set find-file-confirm-nonexistent-file to t, then C-x C-f
requires confirmation before opening a non-existent file.

** If the gpm mouse server is running and t-mouse-mode enabled, Emacs uses a
Unix socket in a GNU/Linux console to talk to server, rather than faking events
using the client program mev.  This C level approach provides mouse
highlighting, and help echoing in the minibuffer.

** The new variable 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.

** The mode-line display a `@' if the default-directory for the current buffer
is on a remote machine, or a hyphen otherwise.

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

** The new command close-display-connection can be used to close a connection
to a remote display, e.g. because the display is about to become unreachable.

** 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 handler (like ange-ftp) are not able to
run processes remotely.

** The new command `display-time-world' starts an updating time display
using several time zones, in a buffer.

* Startup Changes in Emacs 23.1

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


* Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1


* Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1

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

** Minibuffer changes:

*** 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.


* New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1

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


* Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1

** compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error tells `compile' to jump to
the first error encountered during compilations.

** In the `copyright' package, you can specify your copyright holders's names.
Only copyright lines with holders matching copyright-names-regexp will be
considered for update.

** eldoc highlights the function argument under point
with the face `eldoc-highlight-function-argument'.

** VC
*** Clicking on the VC mode-line entry now pops the VC menu.

*** The VC mode-line entry now has a tooltip.

*** VC backends can provide extra menu entries to be added to the "Version Control" menu.
This can be used to add menu entries for backend specific functions.

** sgml-electric-tag-pair-mode lets you simultaneously edit matched tag pairs.

** BibTeX mode:

*** 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' now allows multiple URLs per entry.

+++
** Tramp

*** New connection methods.
The new methods "plinkx", "plink2", "psftp", "sftp" and "fish" have
been introduced.  There are also new so-called gateway methods
"tunnel" and "socks".

*** Multihop syntax has been removed.
The pseudo-method "multi" has been removed.  Instead of, multi hops
can be specified by the new variable `tramp-default-proxies-alist'.

*** More default settings.
Default values can be set via the variables `tramp-default-user',
`tramp-default-user-alist' and `tramp-default-host'.

*** Connection information is cached.
In order to reduce connection setup, information about used
connections are kept persistent in a file.  The name of this file is
defined in the variable `tramp-persistency-file-name'.

*** Control of remote processes.
Running processes on a remote host can be controlled by settings in
`tramp-remote-path' and `tramp-remote-process-environment'.

*** Success of remote copy is checked.
When the variable `file-precious-flag' is set, the success of a remote
file copy is checked via the file's checksum.

** Miscellaneous programming mode changes

*** The variable `fortran-line-length' can change the fixed-form line-length.

** Miscellaneous

*** comint-mode uses `start-file-process' now (see Lisp Changes).
If `default-directory' is a remote file name, subprocesses are started
on the corresponding remote system.

*** C-x C-q in dired-mode now runs the command wdired-change-to-wdired-mode,
and C-x C-q in wdired-mode exits it with asking a question about
saving changes.


* Changes in Emacs 23.1 on non-free operating systems

---
** IPv6 is supported on MS-Windows.
Emacs now supports IPv6 on Windows XP and later, and earlier versions
of Windows with third party IPv6 stacks installed. Previously IPv6 was
supported on other platforms, but not on Windows due to using the winsock
1.1 header file, even though Emacs was linking to the winsock 2 library.


* Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1

+++
** The function `dired-call-process' has been removed.


* Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1

** The function invisible-p returns non-nil if the character
   after a specified position is invisible, or if its argument
   as an `invisible' property would make a character invisible.

** Non-breaking space now acts as whitespace.

+++
** In `condition-case', a handler can specify "let the debugger run first".

You do this by writing `debug' in the list of conditions to be handled,
like this:

    (condition-case nil
	(foo bar)
      ((debug error) nil))

** The `require-match' argument to `completing-read' accepts a new value
`confirm-only'.

+++
** The regexp form \(?<num>:<regexp>\) specifies the group number explicitly.

** New function `window-full-width-p' returns t if a window is as wide
as its frame.

** The new function `split-string-and-unquote' does (what?)

** The new function `combine-and-quote-strings' does (what?)

** The new function `image-refresh' refreshes all images associated
with a given image specification.

+++
** New variable `user-emacs-directory'.
Use this instead of "~/.emacs.d".

+++
** The new function `start-file-process is similar to `start-process',
but obeys file handlers.  The file handler is chosen based on
`default-directory'.  The functions `start-file-process-shell-command'
and `process-file-shell-command' are also new; they call internally
`start-file-process and `process-file', respectively.

+++
** `file-remote-p' has new optional parameters IDENTIFICATION and CONNECTED.
IDENTIFICATION specifies which part of the remote identifier has to be
returned.  With CONNECTED passed non-nil, it is checked whether a
remote connection has been established already.

** The two new functions `looking-at-p' and `string-match-p' can do
the same matching as `looking-at' and `string-match' without changing
the match data.

** The interactive-form of a function can be added post-facto via the
`interactive-form' symbol property.  Mostly useful to add complex interactive
forms to subroutines.

* New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 23.1

** The new package avl-tree.el deals with the AVL tree data structure.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.


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arch-tag: e759449d-88b3-4de4-9900-3a6c3dfa23e2