frequently queried user visible changes between Emacs 20 and 21

[lawrence mitchell]

Well, I've finally got to a point where I'm ready to release this
to public scrutiny.  This is meant to be a collection of what
seem to be FAQs for users moving from emacs 20 -> 21.  Any
comments/suggestions appreciated, either to me personally, or to
the group:

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What this document addresses:

  This FAQ tries to answer (or at least gives pointers to) the
  questions regarding an upgrade from Emacs 20 to Emacs 21 which seem
  to come up most often on <news: gnu.emacs.help>.

What this document does not address:

  This FAQ is /not/ intended to be an introduction to using Emacs in
  general, or how to configure Emacs.  If you're completely new to
  Emacs, you might want to take a look at the Emacs Tutorial
  (the file etc/TUTORIAL in your Emacs distribution, accessible via
  C-h t).
  If you want a starting point for learning about how to configure
  Emacs, you might like to look at the Emacs Wiki <URL:
  http://www.emacswiki.org>.  Or the section Customization in the
  Emacs manual (Accessible via C-h i m Emacs RET m Customization RET).

Some conventions used in this document:

  Users familiar with Emacs will want to skip over this section.

  How to read the keystroke commands:
   C-h means type "h" whilst holding down the control key.
   RET means type return.


Q1) I've just changed from Emacs 20.x to Emacs 21 and suddenly Emacs
    seems to take up a whole lot more horizontal screen space.

    Specifically, there's this annoying, one character wide line on the
    right that's taking up a line for no good reason.  And what
    happened to those backslash-type line-continuation markers that
    were in Emacs 20?

A1) Well, the line on the right (and indeed the left) are called the
    "fringe".  Currently, there is no way to turn off the fringe in
    Emacs 21.{1,2}, however in Emacs 21.4 you will be able to switch
    it off.

    Incidently, Emacs 21 only takes up one character more than Emacs
    20, since the last column in both 20 and 21 are only used for
    line-continuation markers.

    For more information, see the Emacs NEWS file (accessible via C-h N),
    and search for "Fringe".


Q2) I'm a power user, I don't need the menubar type thing that's
    suddenly appeared and is taking all of my screen real estate.

A2) This is called the "tool bar".  You can turn it off in a number of
    different ways, the easiest is to add (tool-bar-mode 0) to your
    ~/.emacs.  For more information, see either the Emacs NEWS file
    (accessible via C-h N) and search for "Tool bar support", or the
    Emacs manual (menu item "Tool Bars").


Q3) Emacs 21 doesn't have the same menu layout as Emacs 20:

    File | Edit | Options | Buffers | Tools | Help
    ----------------------------------------------
    in Emacs 21, as opposed to:

    Buffers | Files | Tools | Edit | Search | Help
    ----------------------------------------------
    in Emacs 20.

A3) This was dicussed for a long time on the emacs-devel mailing list,
    and it was decided that it would be better to make the menu bar
    layout more like that of most other applications, so as to make it
    easier for new users to find their way around Emacs.

    You /can/ redefine the menu bar layout if you build Emacs yourself
    by changing the order in which the menu bar keymaps are defined in
    the file menu-bar.el before dumping Emacs.

Q4) Emacs 21 has different scroll bars to Emacs 20.

A4) Emacs can now be built with a few different toolkits which decide
    what the scroll bars look like.  If you want the old-style
    non-toolkit scroll bars, you can configure Emacs with the option:
    --with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no

    See the Emacs NEWS file (accessible via C-h N) and search for
    "Toolkit scroll bars" for more information.


Q5) Where do I find out more information on Emacs' changes?

A5) All of Emacs' user-visible changes are documented in the file
    etc/NEWS in your Emacs distribution.  You ought to be able to
    read this file by typing C-h N.


;;;; Still to decide on:
Extra information:

The default mode for the cursor is now blinking.  You can turn this
off by adding (blink-cursor-mode 0) in your .emacs.

<home> and <end> keys have changed their default modes?
/----
| From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley)
|
| Anyone who has written any customized lisp code that does anything in the
| vicinity of the minibuffer or shell/comint buffers will soon discover that
| practically everything about the way they operate is different in 21. They
| now use "fields" instead of markers to keep track of things, and the
| minibuffer actually contains the prompt text.
\----

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-- 
lawrence mitchell <wence@gmx.li>