Announcing XEmacs 20.2 XEmacs 20.2 is now available. This is a version of GNU Emacs derived from Emacs version 19 from the Free Software Foundation. This is a continuation of the Internationalization development path started with XEmacs 20.0 and is not yet considered an official upgrade path from XEmacs 19.15. It is a major upgrade from 20.0, containing many bug fixes and enhancements. If you are using XEmacs 20.0 in any flavor (including off of the Sun CD) you should consider upgrading to 20.2. The primary new feature in XEmacs 20.2 is additional support for MULE MUlti-Lingual extensions for Emacs. It has only been seriously tested in a Japanese locale, and no doubt many problems still remain. The support for ISO-Latin-1 and Japanese is fairly strong, so we're releasing it now. MULE support comes at a price -- about a 30% slowdown from 19.15. We're working on making things faster, but it's taking time. Currently, 19.15 and 20.2 compiled without MULE (20.2-latin-1) are faster than 19.14. In short, if you don't need the internationalization features and you're not interested in participating in the upgrade path of XEmacs until the new code stabilizes you should use 19.15. If you like the idea of running the latest code, but don't want to take the performance hit of MULE, don't need to have non-Latin-1 language support, and are willing to put up with the occasional incompatibility caused by the change to the character type, then you should use XEmacs-v20-latin-1. If you wish the whole `v20 experience', then you should use XEmacs-v20-MULE. You can get XEmacs via anonymous FTP from FTP.XEMACS.ORG (128.174.252.16). ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs-20.2/ or from the following mirrors: ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu:/pub/xemacs/ ftp://ftp-digital.cern.ch:/pub/beta/xemacs-20.0/ ftp://ftp.uu.net:/systems/gnu/xemacs/ ftp://ftp.sunet.se:/pub/gnu/xemacs/ ftp://tp.cenatls.cena.dgac.fr:/pub/Emacs/xemacs/ ftp://ftp.th-darmstadt.de:/pub/editors/xemacs/ ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk:/gnu/xemacs/ ftp://ftp.ibp.fr:/pub/emacs/xemacs/ ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu:/pub/packages/xemacs/ ftp://ftp.technion.ac.il:/pub/unsupported/gnu/xemacs/ ftp://thphys.irb.hr:/pub/xemacs/ ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/xemacs/ ftp://ftp.unicamp.br:/pub/xemacs/r20.0/ ftp://ftp.usyd.edu.au:/pub/Xemacs/ ftp://ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp/xemacs/ ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/xemacs/ ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/xemacs It may take a few days for the files to propagate to all of the mirrors. (Mirror sites are encouraged to automatically check ftp.xemacs.org) The complete list of mirror sites, the current FAQ, and several other XEmacs related items can be found at the XEmacs World Wide Web page: http://www.xemacs.org/ Note that as of announcement time no binary kits have been built yet. They should become available over the next couple of weeks given sufficient interest. README This file. xemacs-20.2.tar.gz The complete source distribution. This file is about 20.5 megabytes. When unpacked, the source distribution will take up about 78 megs. You will need another 26 megs or so to compile it. Don't forget to set "binary" mode when transferring these files. Unpack them with some variation of the command "gunzip -c xemacs-20.0.tar.gz | tar -pvxf -". There is a newsgroup for discussing XEmacs. comp.emacs.xemacs: For reporting all bugs in XEmacs, including bugs in the compilation and installation procedures. Also for random questions and conversation about using XEmacs. There is also a mailing list, xemacs@xemacs.org. This mailing list is bidirectionally gatewayed with the newsgroup comp.emacs.xemacs. To be added or removed from this mailing list, send mail to xemacs-request@xemacs.org. (Send all administrative requests, and only administrative requests, to this address.) Please use the newsgroups instead of mailing directly to the maintainers, you are likelier to get a better response that way. Crashes should be reported by using the `M-x send-pr' command built into XEmacs. This sends the problem report off to a Gnats-based bug tracking system. If this fails for any reason you can still report the crash to crashes@xemacs.org, but the report won't be tracked. When reporting a crash, please read carefully the information in part II of the XEmacs FAQ so that you can include enough information in your report to get the problem resolved. In particular, if you are experiencing coredumps, it is vital that you compile XEmacs with the `-g' compile flag so the stack back trace is meaningful. Do not send messages about problems with XEmacs to the GNU Emacs newsgroups and mailing lists (help-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu, bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu, gnu.emacs.help, gnu.emacs.bug, et cetera) unless you are sure that the problem you are reporting is a problem with both versions of Emacs. The following is an excerpt from the NEWS file: * 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 compatibilty 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 ** 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 Sjödin ** 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. Potortì Japanese Emacs resources. MULE X11 fonts. ftp://etlport.etl.go.jp/pub/mule/fonts/ ftp://sh.wide.ad.jp/JAPAN/mule/fonts ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/aux/fonts/ ftp://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/GNU/mule/fonts/ ftp://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/misc/character/fonts/ Libcanna (input method library) No English documentation available at the present time. ftp://ftp.nec.co.jp/pub/packages/Canna32 ftp://ftp.csce.kyushu-u.ac.jp/pub/Misc/Canna/Canna32 Skk. (input method library) ftp://ftp.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/SKK ftp://steam.stanford.edu/pub/skk Libwnn (input method library) ftp://ftp.wg.omron.co.jp/pub/Wnn ftp://ftp.csce.kyushu-u.ac.jp/pub/Misc/Wnn