Readline-6.1 available for FTP

[Chet Ramey]

The first public release of the GNU Readline library, version 6.1,
is now available for FTP with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.1.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-6.1.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

This distribution is essentially a standalone version of the
readline library that appears in Bash-4.1 together with
an `autoconf' framework.  The documentation has been updated and
is current.  Postscript, DVI, and Info versions of the Readline
and History manuals are included.  A list of changes in this
release is appended to this announcement.

This release accompanies the simultaneous release of bash-4.1. 
The last few bugs (fingers crossed) in the multibyte character
redisplay code have been corrected.  There are improvements in
the programming interface and new user-visible variables and
bindable commands. 

GNU Readline is a library which provides programs with an input
facility including command-line editing and history.  Editing
commands similar to both emacs and vi are included.  The GNU
History library, which provides facilities for managing a list of
previously-typed command lines and an interactive command line
recall facility similar to that provided by csh, is also present.
The history library is built as part of the readline as well as
separately.

Please send readline bug reports to address@hidden

As always, thanks for your help.

Chet

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, readline-6.1,
and the previous version, readline-6.0.

1.  Changes to Readline

a.  The SIGWINCH signal handler now avoids calling the redisplay code if
    one arrives while in the middle of redisplay.

b.  Changes to the timeout code to make sure that timeout values greater
    than one second are handled better.

c.  Fixed a bug in the redisplay code that was triggered by a prompt
    containing invisible characters exactly the width of the screen.

d.  Fixed a bug in the redisplay code encountered when running in horizontal
    scroll mode.

e.  Fixed a bug that prevented menu completion from properly completing
    filenames.

f.  Fixed a redisplay bug caused by a multibyte character causing a line to
    wrap.

g.  Fixed a bug that caused key sequences of two characters to not be
    recognized when a longer sequence identical in the first two characters
    was bound.

h.  Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to be attempted on $'...'
    single-quoted strings.

i.  Fixed a bug that caused incorrect redisplay when the prompt contained
    multibyte characters in an `invisible' sequence bracketed by \[ and
    \].

j.  Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to short-circuit after
    encountering a multibyte character.

k.  Fixed a bug that caused applications using the callback interface to not
    react to SIGINT (or other signals) until another character arrived.

2.  New Features in Readline

a.  New bindable function: menu-complete-backward.

b.  In the vi insertion keymap, C-n is now bound to menu-complete by default,
    and C-p to menu-complete-backward.

c.  When in vi command mode, repeatedly hitting ESC now does nothing, even
    when ESC introduces a bound key sequence.  This is closer to how
    historical vi behaves.

d.  New bindable function: skip-csi-sequence.  Can be used as a default to
    consume key sequences generated by keys like Home and End without having
    to bind all keys.

e.  New application-settable function: rl_filename_rewrite_hook.  Can be used
    to rewite or modify filenames read from the file system before they are
    compared to the word to be completed.

f.  New bindable variable: skip-completed-text, active when completing in the
    middle of a word.  If enabled, it means that characters in the completion
    that match characters in the remainder of the word are "skipped" rather
    than inserted into the line.

g.  The pre-readline-6.0 version of menu completion is available as
    "old-menu-complete" for users who do not like the readline-6.0 version.

h.  New bindable variable: echo-control-characters.  If enabled, and the
    tty ECHOCTL bit is set, controls the echoing of characters corresponding
    to keyboard-generated signals.

i.  New bindable variable: enable-meta-key.  Controls whether or not readline
    sends the smm/rmm sequences if the terminal indicates it has a meta key
    that enables eight-bit characters.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    address@hidden    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/