[Emacs-diffs] Changes to emacs/man/anti.texi

[Richard M. Stallman]

Index: emacs/man/anti.texi
diff -c emacs/man/anti.texi:1.20 emacs/man/anti.texi:1.21
*** emacs/man/anti.texi:1.20    Tue Oct 30 13:26:57 2001
--- emacs/man/anti.texi Sun Aug 18 20:57:11 2002
***************
*** 3,280 ****
  @c See file emacs.texi for copying conditions.
  
  @node Antinews, Mac OS, X Resources, Top
! @appendix Emacs 20 Antinews
  
    For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about
! downgrading to Emacs version 20.  We hope you will enjoy the greater
! simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 21 features.
  
  @itemize @bullet
  @item
! The display engine has been greatly simplified by eliminating support
! for variable-size characters and other non-text display features.  This
! avoids the complexity of display layout in Emacs 21.  To wit:
  
- @itemize @minus
  @item
! Variable-size characters are not supported in Emacs 20.  You cannot use
! fonts which contain oversized characters, and using italic fonts can
! result in illegible display.  However, text which uses variable-size
! fonts is unreadable anyway.  With all characters in a frame laid out on
! a regular grid, each character having the same height and width, text is
! much easier to read.
  
  @item
! Emacs does not display images, or play sounds.  It just displays text,
! as you would expect from a @strong{text} editor.
  
! @item
! Specification of the font for a face now uses an XLFD font name, for
! compatibility with other X applications.  This means that font
! attributes cannot be merged when combining faces; however, experience
! shows that mergers are bad economics.  Face inheritance has also been
! removed, so no one can accumulate ``too much face.''
! 
! @item
! Several face appearance attributes, including 3D, strike-through, and
! overline, have been eliminated.
! 
! @item
! Emacs now provides its own ``lean and mean'' scroll bars instead of using
! those from the X toolkit.  Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus now
! look just like any other menu item, which simplifies them, and prevents
! them from standing out and distracting your attention from the other
! menu items.
! 
! @item
! There are no toolbars and no tooltips; in particular, @acronym{GUD}
! mode cannot display variable values in a tooltip when you click on
! that variable's name.  Instead, Emacs 20 provides a direct interface to
! the debugger, so that you can type appropriate debugger commands, such
! as @kbd{display foo} and @kbd{print bar}.  As these commands use
! explicit words, their meaning is more self-evident.
! 
! @item
! Colors are not available on text-only terminals.  If you @emph{must}
! have colors, but cannot afford to run X, you can now use the MS-DOG
! version of Emacs inside a DOS emulator.
! 
! @item
! The mode line is not mouse-sensitive, since it is meant only to
! display information.  Use keyboard commands to switch between buffers,
! toggle read-only and modified status, switch minor modes on and off,
! etc.
! 
! @item
! The support for ``wheeled'' mice under X has been removed, because
! of their slow scroll rate, and because you will find fewer and fewer of
! these mice as you go back in time.  Instead Emacs 20 provides the
! @kbd{C-v} and @kbd{M-v} keys for scrolling.  (You can also use the
! scroll bar, but be advised that it, too, may be absent in yet earlier
! Emacs versions.)
! 
! @item
! Busy-cursor display is gone, as it was found to be too hard to draw on
! displays whose resolution is getting lower and lower.  This means that
! you get the standard kind of cursor blinking that your terminal
! provides.
! 
! @item
! Some aspects of Emacs appearance, such as the colors of the scroll bar
! and the menus, can only be controlled via X resources.  Since colors
! aren't supported except on X, it doesn't make any sense to do this in
! any way but the X way.  For those users who aren't privy to X arcana,
! we've provided good default colors that should make everybody happy.
! 
! @item
! Emacs 20 adds new lines to the buffer when you move down from the last
! line with @kbd{C-n} or a down-arrow.
! 
! @item
! The variable @code{show-trailing-whitespace} has no special meaning, so
! trailing whitespace on a line is now always displayed correctly: as
! empty space.  To see if a line ends with spaces or tabs, type @kbd{C-e}
! on that line.  Likewise, empty lines at the end of the buffer are not
! marked in any way; use @kbd{M->} to see where the end of the buffer is.
! 
! @item
! The spacing between text lines on the display now always follows the
! font design and the rules of your window manager.  This provides for
! predictable appearance of the displayed text.
! @end itemize
! 
! @item
! Emacs 20 has simpler support for multi-lingual editing.  While not as
! radical a simplification as Emacs 19 will be, it goes a long way toward
! eliminating some of the annoying features:
! 
! @itemize @minus
! @item
! Translations of the Emacs reference cards to other languages are no
! longer part of the distribution, because in the past we expect
! computer users to speak English.
! 
! @item
! To avoid extra confusion, many language environments have been
! eliminated.  For example, @samp{Polish} and @samp{Celtic} (Latin-8)
! environments are not supported.  The Latin-9 environment is gone,
! too, because you won't need the Euro sign in the past.
! 
! @item
! Emacs 20 always asks you which coding system to use when saving 
! a buffer, unless it can use the same one that it used to read the buffer.
! It does not try to see if the preferred coding system is suitable.
  
  @item
! Commands which provide detailed information about character sets and
! coding systems, such as @code{list-charset-chars},
! @code{describe-character-set}, and the @kbd{C-u C-x =} key-sequence,
! no longer exist.  The less said about non-ASCII characters, the
! better.
  
  @item
! The terminal coding system cannot be set to something CCL-based, so
! keyboards which produce @code{KOI8} and DOS/Windows codepage codes
! cannot be supported directly.  Instead, you should use one of the input
! methods provided in the Leim package.
! @end itemize
  
  @item
! As you move back through time, some systems will become unimportant or
! enter the vaporware phase, so Emacs 20 does not support them:
  
- @itemize @minus
  @item
! Emacs 20 cannot be built on GNU/Linux systems running on IA64 machines,
! and you cannot build a 64-bit Emacs on Solaris or Irix even though there
! are still 64-bit versions of those OSes.
  
  @item
! LynxOS is also not supported, and neither is the Macintosh, though they
! still exist.
! @end itemize
  
  @item
! The arrangement of menu bar items differs from most other @acronym{GUI}
! programs.  We think that uniformity of look-and-feel is boring, and that
! Emacs' unique features require its unique menu-bar configuration.
  
  @item
! You cannot save the options that you set from the @samp{Options}
! menu-bar menu; instead, you need to set all the options again each time
! you start a new session.  However, if you follow the recommended
! practice and keep a single Emacs session running until you log out,
! you won't have to set the options very often.
  
  @item
! Emacs 20 does not pop up a buffer with error messages when an error is
! signaled during loading of the user's init file.  Instead, it simply
! announces the fact that an error happened.  To know where in the init
! file that was, insert @code{(message "foo")} lines judiciously into the
! file and look for those messages in the @samp{*Messages*} buffer.
  
  @item
! Some commands no longer treat Transient Mark mode specially.  For
! example, @code{ispell} doesn't spell-check the region when Transient
! Mark mode is in effect and the mark is active; instead, it checks the
! current buffer.  (Transient Mark mode is alien to the spirit of Emacs,
! so we are planning to remove it altogether in an earlier version.)
  
  @item
! @kbd{C-Down-Mouse-3} does not show what would be in the menu bar
! when the menu bar is not displayed.
  
  @item
! For uniformity, the @key{delete} function key in Emacs 20 works exactly like
! the @key{DEL} key, on both text-only terminals and window systems---it
! always deletes backward.  This eliminates the inconsistency of Emacs 21,
! where the key labeled @key{delete} deletes forward when you are using a
! window system, and backward on a text-only terminals.
  
  @item
! The ability to place backup files in special subdirectories (controlled
! by @code{backup-directory-alist}) has been eliminated.  This makes
! finding your backup files much easier: they are always in the same
! directory as the original files.
  
  @item
! Emacs no longer refuses to load Lisp files compiled by incompatible
! versions of Emacs, which may contain invalid byte-code.  Instead,
! Emacs now dumps core when it encounters such byte-code.  However, this
! is a rare occurrence, and it won't happen at all when all Emacs
! versions merge together, in the distant past.
  
  @item
! The @kbd{C-x 5 1} command has been eliminated.  If you want to delete
! all the frames but the current one, delete them one by one instead.
  
  @item
! CC Mode now enforces identical values for some customizable options,
! such as indentation style, for better consistency.  In particular, if
! you select an indentation style for Java, the same style is used
! for C and address@hidden buffers as well.
  
  @item
! Isearch does not highlight other possible matches; it shows only the
! current match, to avoid distracting your attention.  @kbd{Mouse-2} in
! the echo area during incremental search now signals an error, instead of
! inserting the current selection into the search string.  But you can
! accomplish more or less the same job by typing @kbd{M-y}.
  
  @item
! The ability to specify a port number when editing remote files with
! @code{ange-ftp} was removed.  Instead, Emacs 20 provides undocumented
! features in the function @code{ange-ftp-normal-login} (@cite{Use the
! source, Luke!}) to specify the port.
  
  @item
! Emacs 20 does not check for changing time stamps of remote files, since
! the old FTP programs you will encounter in the past could not provide
! the time stamp anyway.  Windows-style FTP clients which output the
! @samp{^M} character at the end of each line get special handling from
! @code{ange-ftp} in Emacs 20, with unexpected results that should make
! your life more interesting.
  
  @item
! Many complicated display features, including highlighting of
! mouse-sensitive text regions and popping up help strings for menu items,
! don't work in the MS-DOS version.  Spelling doesn't work on MS-DOS,
! and Eshell doesn't exist, so there's no workable shell-mode, either.
! This fits the spirit of MS-DOS, which resembles a dumb character
! terminal.
  
  @item
! The @code{woman} package has been removed, so Emacs users on non-Posix
! systems will need @emph{a real man} to read manual pages.  (Users who
! are not macho can read the Info documentation instead.)
  
  @item
! @code{recentf} has been removed, because we figure that you can remember
! the names of the files you edit frequently.  With decreasing disk size,
! you should have fewer files anyway, so you won't notice the absence of
! this feature.
  
  @item
! The @code{field} property does not exist in Emacs 20, so various
! packages that run subsidiary programs in Emacs buffers cannot in general
! distinguish which text was user input and which was output from the
! subprocess.  If you need to try to do this nonetheless, Emacs 20
! provides a variable @code{comint-prompt-regexp}, which lets you try to
! distinguish input by recognizing prompt strings.
  
  @item
! We have eliminated the special major modes for Delphi sources,
! PostScript files, context diffs, and @file{TODO} files.  Use Fundamental
! Mode instead.
  
  @item
! Many additional packages that unnecessarily complicate your life in
! Emacs 21 are absent in Emacs 20.  You cannot browse address@hidden classes 
with
! Ebrowse, access @acronym{SQL} data bases, access @acronym{LDAP} and
! other directory servers, or mix shell commands and Lisp functions using
! Eshell.
  
  @item
  To keep up with decreasing computer memory capacity and disk space, many
! other functions and files have been eliminated in Emacs 20.
  @end itemize
--- 3,148 ----
  @c See file emacs.texi for copying conditions.
  
  @node Antinews, Mac OS, X Resources, Top
! @appendix Emacs 21.3 Antinews
  
    For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about
! downgrading to Emacs version 21.3.  We hope you will enjoy the greater
! simplicity that results from the absence of many newer features.
  
  @itemize @bullet
  @item
! The input methods for Emacs are included in a separate distribution
! called ``Leim''.  To use them, you must extract the Leim tar file on
! top of the Emacs distribution, into the same directory, before you
! build Emacs.
  
  @item
! The file position and line number information is now at the end
! of the mode line.
  
  @item
! When a file is managed with version control, the command @kbd{C-x C-q}
! (whose general meaning is to make a buffer read-only or writable) now
! does so by checking the file in or out.  Checking the file out makes
! the buffer writable; checking it in makes the buffer read-only (at
! least with RCS).
  
! You can still use @kbd{C-x v v} to do these operations if you wish;
! its meaning is unchanged.  If you want to control the buffer's
! read-only flag without performing any version control operation,
! use @kbd{M-x toggle-read-only}.
  
  @item
! Filesets are not supported.
  
  @item
! For simplicity, windows always have fringes.  We wouldn't want
! to in-fringe anyone's windows.  Likewise, horizontal scrolling
! always works the same automatic way.
  
  @item
! When you are logged in as root, all files now give you writable
! buffers in Emacs reflecting the fact that you can write any files.
  
  @item
! Unicode support and unification between address@hidden character
! sets have been removed.  Cutting and pasting X selections does not
! support ``extended segments'' so there are certain coding systems
! it cannot handle.
  
  @item
! @kbd{C-w} in an incremental search always grabs an entire word
! into the search string.  More precisely, it grabs text through
! the next end of a word.
  
  @item
! Yanking now preserves all text properties that were in the killed
! text.  The variable @code{yank-excluded-properties} has no meaning.
  
  @item
! Occur mode, Info mode, and Comint-derived modes now control
! fontification in their own way, and @kbd{M-x font-lock-mode}
! has nothing to do with it.  To control fontification in Info
! mode, use the variable @code{Info-fontify}.
  
  @item
! In Dired's @kbd{!} command, @samp{*} and @samp{?} now
! cause substitution of the file names wherever they appear---not
! only when they are surrounded by whitespace.
  
  @item
! Minibuffer completion commands now always complete the entire
! minibuffer contents, just as if you had typed them at the end
! of the minibuffer, no matter where point is actually located.
  
  @item
! An unquoted @samp{$} in a file name is now an error, if the following
! name is not recognized as an environment variable.  Thus,
! the file name @file{foo$bar} would probably be an error.  Meanwhile,
! the @code{setenv} command does not expand @samp{$} at all.
  
  @item
! Commands to set the mark at a place away from point, including
! @address@hidden, @kbd{M-h}, etc., don't do anything special when you repeat
! them.  In most cases, typing these commands multiple times is
! equivalent to using them once.  @kbd{M-h} does not use its numeric
! argument.
  
  @item
! @address@hidden address@hidden has no special meaning and neither does
! @kbd{C-u C-x C-x}.
  
  @item
! There is no horizontal-bar cursor.
  
  @item
! The faces @code{minibuffer-prompt} and @code{mode-line-inactive}
! do not exist, and the features they control don't exist either.
  
  @item
! The default value of @code{keyboard-coding-system} is always @code{nil}.
! Emacs does not set it based on your locale settings.
! If you want some other value, you must set it yourself.
  
  @item
! SGML mode does not handle XML syntax, and does not have indentation support.
  
  @item
! The @kbd{C-h} subcommands have been rearranged--especially those that
! display specific files.  Type @kbd{C-h C-h} to see a list of these
! commands; that will show you what is different.
  
  @item
! Emacs does not read @file{~/.abbrev_defs} automatically; if you want
! to load abbrev definitions from a file, you must always do so
! explicitly.
  
  @item
! The @samp{--fullwidth}, @samp{--fullheight} and @samp{--fullscreen}
! command line options are not supported.
  
  @item
! The @samp{--geometry} option now entirely applies only to the initial
! frame.
  
  @item
! Many commands have been removed from the menus or rearranged.
  
  @item
! Many @code{etags} features for customizing parsing using regexps
! have been removed.
  
  @item
! The CUA, ido, table, tramp, reveal, ruler-mode, and ibuffer packages
! have been removed.  So has the spreadsheet, SES, and the algebraic
! calculator, Calc.  (We distribute Calc separately.)
  
  @item
! The kmacro package has been removed.  To start a keyboard macro you
! must use @kbd{C-x (}; to end one, @kbd{C-x )}; to execute the last
! one, @kbd{C-x e}.
  
  @item
  To keep up with decreasing computer memory capacity and disk space, many
! other functions and files have been eliminated in Emacs 21.3.
  @end itemize