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Saturday, May 8, 2010

New features in Emacs 23.2

From the changelog or by C-h n, here's a quick abbreviated list of my personal, noteworthy changes in this release, as I see it.  Of course, you'd need to read the NEWS file to see the entire list of changes.

** The maximum size of buffers (and the largest fixnum) is doubled.
On typical 32bit systems, buffers can now be up to 512MB.

** The pointer now becomes invisible when typing.
Customize `make-pointer-invisible' to disable this feature.

** New command `async-shell-command', bound globally to `M-&'.
This executes the command asynchronously, similar to calling `M-!' and manually adding an ampersand to the end of the command.  With `M-&', you don't need the ampersand. The output appears in the buffer `*Async Shell Command*'.

*** A new command `zrgrep' searches recursively in gzipped files.

** CEDET (the Collection of Emacs Development Tools) is now in Emacs.
This is a collection of packages to aid with using Emacs as an IDE (integrated development environment):

*** The Semantic package allows the use of parsers to intelligently edit and navigate source code.  Parsers for C/C++, Java, Javascript, and several other languages are included by default, and Semantic can also interface with external tools such as GNU Global and GNU Idutils.

To enable Semantic, use the global minor mode `semantic-mode'. See the Semantic manual for details.

*** EDE (Emacs Development Environment) is a package for managing code projects, including features such as automatic Makefile generation.

To enable EDE, use the minor mode `global-ede-mode'. See the EDE manual for details.

** htmlfontify.el turns a fontified Emacs buffer into an HTML page.

The last one, you'll love it when you want to share code with a non Emacs, non IDE user.   I believe it might be the same thing as htmlize.el.

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