GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. Copyright (C) 2017-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end of the file for license conditions. Please send Emacs bug reports to 'bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org'. If possible, use 'M-x report-emacs-bug'. This file is about changes in Emacs version 28. See file HISTORY for a list of GNU Emacs versions and release dates. See files NEWS.27, NEWS.26, ..., 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 all relevant manuals in doc/ have been updated. --- means no change in the manuals is needed. When you add a new item, use the appropriate mark if you are sure it applies, and please also update docstrings as needed. * Installation Changes in Emacs 28.1 ** Cairo graphics library is now used by default if found. '--with-cairo' is now the default, if the appropriate development files are found by 'configure'. Note that building with Cairo means using Pango instead of libXFT for font support. Since Pango 1.44 has removed support for bitmapped fonts, this may require you to adjust your font settings. Note also that 'FontBackend' settings in ".Xdefaults" or ".Xresources", or 'font-backend' frame parameter settings in your init files, may need to be adjusted, as 'xft' is no longer a valid backend when using Cairo. Use 'ftcrhb' if your Emacs was built with HarfBuzz text shaping support, and 'ftcr' otherwise. You can determine this by checking 'system-configuration-features'. The 'ftcr' backend will still be available when HarfBuzz is supported, but will not be used by default. We strongly recommend building with HarBuzz support. 'x' is still a valid backend. --- ** 'configure' now warns about building with libXft support. libXft is unmaintained, and causes a number of problems with modern fonts including but not limited to crashes; support for it may be removed in a future version of Emacs. Please consider using Cairo + HarfBuzz instead. --- ** 'configure' now warns about not using HarfBuzz if using Cairo. We want to encourage people to use the most modern font features available, and this is the Cairo graphics library + HarfBuzz for font shaping, so 'configure' now recommends that combination. --- ** The ftx font backend driver has been removed. It was declared obsolete in Emacs 27.1. * Startup Changes in Emacs 28.1 * Changes in Emacs 28.1 ** Support for '(box . SIZE)' cursor-type. By default, 'box' cursor always has a filled box shape. But if you specify cursor-type to be '(box . SIZE)', the cursor becomes a hollow box if the point is on an image larger than 'SIZE' pixels in any dimension. * Editing Changes in Emacs 28.1 +++ ** New command 'undo-redo'. It undoes previous undo commands, but doesn't record itself as an undoable command. +++ ** 'read-number' now has its own history variable. Additionally, the function now accepts a HIST argument which can be used to specify a custom history variable. +++ ** Input history for 'goto-line' is now local to every buffer. Each buffer will keep a separate history of line numbers used with 'goto-line'. This should help making faster the process of finding line numbers that were previously jumped to. +++ ** When 'suggest-key-bindings' is non-nil, the completion list of 'M-x' shows equivalent key bindings for all commands that have them. * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 28.1 ** Dired *** State changing VC operations are supported in dired-mode on files (but still not on directories). ** Help +++ *** New command 'describe-keymap' describes keybindings in a keymap. --- ** The old non-SMIE indentation of 'sh-mode' has been removed. --- ** The sb-image.el library is now marked obsolete. This file was a compatibility kludge which is no longer needed. --- ** 'lisp-mode' now uses 'common-lisp-indent-function'. To revert to the previous behaviour, '(setq lisp-indent-function 'lisp-indent-function)' from 'lisp-mode-hook'. ** Edebug +++ *** Edebug specification lists can use the new keyword '&error', which unconditionally aborts the current edebug instrumentation with the supplied error message. ** Tramp +++ *** New connection method "media", which allows accessing media devices like cell phones, tablets or cameras. ** Tempo --- *** 'tempo-define-template' can now re-assign templates to tags. Previously, assigning a new template to an already defined tag had no effect. ** map.el *** Pcase 'map' pattern added keyword symbols abbreviation. A pattern like '(map :sym)' binds the map's value for ':sym' to 'sym', equivalent to '(map (:sym sym))'. ** Package +++ *** New functions to filter the package list. The filter command key bindings are as follows: key binding --- ------- / a package-menu-filter-by-archive / k package-menu-filter-by-keyword / n package-menu-filter-by-name / s package-menu-filter-by-status / v package-menu-filter-by-version / / package-menu-filter-clear * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 28.1 * Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 28.1 ** In nroff mode, 'center-line' is now bound to 'M-o M-s'. The original key binding was 'M-s', which interfered with I-search, since the latter uses 'M-s' as a prefix key of the search prefix map. * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 28.1 ** 'equal' no longer examines some contents of window configurations. Instead, it considers window configurations to be equal only if they are 'eq'. To compare contents, use 'compare-window-configurations' instead. This change helps fix a bug in 'sxhash-equal', which returned incorrect hashes for window configurations and some other objects. --- ** The obsolete function 'thread-alive-p' has been removed. ** 'dns-query' now consistently uses Lisp integers to represent integers. Formerly it made an exception for integer components of SOA records, because SOA serial numbers can exceed fixnum ranges on 32-bit platforms. Emacs now supports bignums so this old glitch is no longer needed. ** The Lisp variables 'previous-system-messages-locale' and 'previous-system-time-locale' have been removed, as they were created by mistake and were not useful to Lisp code. ** The regexp mistake '[:digit:]' is now an error. The correct syntax is '[[:digit:]]'. Previously, forgetting the extra brackets silently resulted in a regexp that did not at all work as intended. * Lisp Changes in Emacs 28.1 ** The variable 'force-new-style-backquotes' has been removed. This removes the final remaining trace of old-style backquotes. ** The module header 'emacs-module.h' now contains type aliases 'emacs_function' and 'emacs_finalizer' for module functions and finalizers, respectively. ** Module functions can now install an optional finalizer that is called when the function object is garbage-collected. Use 'set_function_finalizer' to set the finalizer and 'get_function_finalizer' to retrieve it. ** 'file-modes' and 'set-file-modes' now have an optional argument specifying whether to follow symbolic links. ** 'parse-time-string' can now parse ISO 8601 format strings, such as "2020-01-15T16:12:21-08:00". * Changes in Emacs 28.1 on Non-Free Operating Systems +++ ** On macOS, Emacs can now load dynamic modules with a ".dylib" suffix. 'module-file-suffix' now has the value ".dylib" on macOS, but the ".so" suffix is supported as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 of the License, 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. If not, see . Local variables: coding: utf-8 mode: outline paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" end: