News - Barry's Emacs

8-Apr-2023 V8.9.4 release with kits for Windows 10 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 37 and 36.

• Support building for Debian and Ubuntu.
• Add remote file editing via ssh's sftp.
• Support HiDPI screens, so called Retinae or 4K displays.
• Port to PyQt6.
• Stop cursor blinking when Emacs is not the focused app.
• Wayland on Linux required changes to the way icons and desktop files are named and used.

14-Feb-2021 V8.8.0 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 31, 32 and 33, Centos 8, 7 and 6.

• Add subprocess support to Windows, macOS and unix GUI versions.
  • shell command starts a shell in a emacs window
  • compile-it command by default uses make to compile code.
    Use next-error (^X-^N) to go to errors from the compilation.
• Add the "man" command for macOS and unix versions.
  The man-word-in-buffer will run man the current word.
• Add the chmod-current-buffer to have the mode of the current buffer's file. macOS and unix only.
• Add the chown-current-buffer to have the owndership of the current buffer's file. macOS and unix only.
• Add (is-unix-operating-system) to be true for any of the OS that the unix part of the library is included for. e.g. linux, netbsd, macOS at the moment
• Update some examples in the documentation
• Fix syntax hilight for "rem" in Windows batch/command files
• Windows and macOS builds now use a Python venv
• Updated to use python 3.9 with latest PyQt for Windows and macOS
• rename p4-open to p4-edit (p4 open is not documented)

22-Dec-2020 V8.7.1 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 31, 32 and 33, Centos 8, 7 and 6.

• new json-mode for editing JSON files
• RPM-specfile-mode for editing RPM spec files
• fix problem with the setup of the text-mode syntax table
• improve spell-mode to show a more accurate corrections count.
  Spell checker functions now work in a recursive edit which allows other packages to use the spell checked
• syntax tables support limited ere for keywords and comments
• ntcmdmode uses case-fold,ere to fix finding the "rem" comment in Windows batch/command files.
• import the p4-change-mode package to support deleteing the header comments and Jobs sections from a changespec.
  Add p4-spell-check-description.
• The order of buffers in the buffer-names array matches the order used by list-buffers.
• fix buffer-dired problem when deleting the current buffer and popping up a second window.
• fix problem with syntax colouring not being updated correctly in one rare situation
• fix issue with delete-buffer that could change the current buffer to "main".
• Updated INSTALL.html to match current practice
• macOS build now uses a pythob venv

12-Oct-2020 V8.7.0 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 30, 31 and 32, Centos 8, 7 and 6.

• New spell module provides spell-check-buffer, spell-check-region, spell-check-word-in-buffer and more.
  For Windows and macOS include dictionaries for en_GB, en_US, en_CA and en_AU for other OS use the installed Hunspell dictionaries.
  Spell check is not built for Centos 6 and 7.
• New lua-mode for editing lua script files.
• Rework Emacs documentation (browsers now implement cross-site-script security features that stopped the old docs from working).
• Implement dark-mode for the Emacs documentation.
• Add emacs_doc: logical name to access the files in the documentation folder.

3-Apr-2020 V8.6.2 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 30, 31 and 32, Centos 8, 7 and 6.

• Fix ere-quote to quote "?"
• Fix and improve dired - works for unix and macOS.
• Fix for memory leak in Python UI code.
• Fix macOS bemacs-cli and bemacs_client needed fixes to use the Python version from within the /Applications/Barry's Emacs app.
• Improve p4-diff and p4-change-mode
• Fix for dired on macOS needed to find files correctly
• html-mode now colours <!- html comments -->
• document maximum-file-read-size

15-Jun-2019 V8.6.0 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 30, Centos 7 and Centos 6.

• Fix toolbar drawing issue on macOS where the background of the toolbar was transparent.
• Change the emacs database functions to use sqlite from ndbm.
• Refactor the build scripts to simplify adding new features like sqlite
• Add keyword-2 high-lighting to sh-mode for common shell command, cp, mv etc.
• New feature to allow modes to be executed after a file is reloaded via synchronise; use by diff-mode.

29-Apr-2019 V8.5.3 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 29.

• Fix for initialising the XML preferences on first use.
• Fix for dired not finding the filename.
• Can now be built on NetBSD.

15-Apr-2019 V8.5.2 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 29.

• fix crash when (ere-search-forward "^\\+.*") is use to match very long lines.
• fix bemacs-cli not starting up correctly on macOS.
• fix crash when using autoload to redefine a function that is executing autoload will silently be ignore for an already defined function
• improve diff change the colours used and the diff-goto-diff function
• add Perforce code in the p4-change-mode p4-clientspec-mode p4-commands modules

2-Feb-2019 V8.5.1 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 29.

• New Preference Cursor allow choice of line vs. block and steady vs. blinking cursor.
• When Shift is pressed 3 times highlight the cursor.
• Support Ctrl-- and Ctrl-+ to change the font size and Ctrl-0 to reset to the default.
• Improved grep command by allow language modes to default the file types to grep for.
• Fix problem with line spacing that left horizontal lines on the screen.

24-Dec-2018 V8.5.0 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 29.

• Add Dark-mode support. Controlled from the Preferences Colours tab.
• diff-mode will colour unified diff file. Defaults to *.patch and *.diff files.
• Turn on colouring for bemacs-cli console version.
• Fix a problem reloading a read-only file that reported a problem with journalling.

12-Aug-2018 V8.4.2 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 26.

• Fix problem with spaces in mlisp introduced in 8.4.1

13-May-2018 V8.4.1 release with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 26.

• Add all unicode space characters as spaces
• Add some missing documenation for ere functions
• fix for PC-edit-cut
• fix for incsearch keys on a linux console
• Improved Python-mode
• Improve diff to be smarter about what to diff between

15-October-2017 V8.4.0 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 26.

• Added toggling toolbar and menu items
• new case-fold-search and replace-mode added to the menus and toolbar

16-April-2017 V8.3.4 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later, Mac OS X 64 bit and Fedora 25.

• The disk space required for Barry's Emacs has been reduced to about 1/2 what 8.3.3 used on Windows and macOS.
• Drawing problem with pixels left on screen fixed.
• On macOS text on retina screens is no longer faint.
• make bemacs -wait work on linux.
• Small improvements to HTML-mode and sh-mode.
• Small docs improvements.
• fix auto-execute to no longer lowercase the filename before comparing to the auto-execute pattern

1-November-2016 V8.3.3 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Fix performance issue in apropos and describe-bindings. These commands where very slow, now that are almost instant.
• Fix where journal files are created.
  • use the filename's folder for the journal file
  • use emacs_user: for the buffer journals
  • make the filename concoction agorithm unicode aware and avoid invalid filename chars

3-September-2016 V8.3.2 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Support reading files in UTF-16 which is often used on Windows. They will be saved as UTF-8.
• Fix problem in the UTF-8 support that could truncate a file that was not valid UTF-8.
• Fix Edit/Paste menu command.
• Fix some ERE parsing Issues. "\>" rejected. [\t] parsed as if [\n]. (?#...), (?=...) and (?!...) reported parsing error.
• Mac OS X: Fix problem when Barry's Emacs is not running and a file is dragged on the Barry's Emacs icon or opened from the Finder.
• Windows: Remove restriction on the maximum unicode code point that Emacs would handle. It was 65535 and is now the unicode standard limit of 1.1 million.
• About box shows Git commit id. This allows the exact code that was used to build Emacs to be identified.

22-July-2016 V8.3.0 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Preferences now allows colours to be configured. Double click to edit or use the context menu (right click).
• New syntax type of Problem. Useful for highlighing white space issues.
• New mode: white-space-mini-mode adds checks for white space problems. See the docs for details.
• Existing languages modes updated to merge white-space-mini-mode support.
• New mode XHTML-mode. This is a combination of HTML-mode and XML-mode. From HTML-mode comes the keyword colouring and from XML-mode the ability to use ESC-(, ESC-) to move back for forth between matching elements.
• Documentation has seen a lot of changes under the covers to make the HTML move from old 1990's style HTML to modern HTML 5 and CSS style. This will make it a lot easier to update the contents of the documentation.

26-June-2016 V8.2.6 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Undo changes to write-named-file that caused regression in some MLisp.
• Add new reset-buffer-name-from-filename for use by Save As.

25-June-2016 V8.2.5 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• write-named-file will cause the buffer name to be set as it the filewas just read in.
• Fix issue with using the (quote str) function. Added (re-quote str) and (ere-quote str) which correctly quotes the str based on re or ere syntax.
• Updated query replace implementation to the the new quote functions.
• Python-mode now supports python2 and python3. The default if not sure is python3.
• describe-binding now lists the local binding before the global binding. Which seems more usable.
• File/Open and File/Save As have been improved. Emacs current-directory is use as the default for open-file. save-as defaults to folder of the file being saved and its name is selected. Save As supports saving scratch buffers.

21-May-2016 V8.2.4 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Add Save As Dialog accessed from the File menu along with Save, Save modified files.
• update (quote "str") to quote all current regex special chars.

10-May-2016 V8.2.3 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Add File Open Dialog accessed from the File menu.

2-May-2016 V8.2.2 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

• Adds open documentation from the help menu.
• Fix Open with Barry's Emacs from Windows explorer.

26-Apr-2016 V8.2.1 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

17-Mar-2016 V8.2.0 released with kits for Windows 7 64 bit and later and Mac OS X 64 bit.

2-Sep-2005 V7.2-246 blessed as Stable release.

2-Sep-2005

Move barrys-emacs.org to a new hosting company clara.net (the pervious iicinternet.com has very poor customer support).

19-Jan-2005 Beta test version of Barry's Emacs V7.2-246 is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

Add smart-auto-execute, great for working on unix #! script files and a couple of bug fixes. Dropped support for OpenBSD and RedHat 7.2, Add support for Mac OS X, RedHat FC2 and FC3

29-Jul-2004 Beta test version of Barry's Emacs V7.2-242 is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

Add better XML-mode and a couple of bug fixes.

12-Apr-2004 Beta test version of Barry's Emacs V7.2-239 is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

Add simple XML-mode couple of bug fixes.

17-Mar-2004 Beta test version of Barry's Emacs V7.2-238 is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

fixes default backup file naming bug introduced in 237.

14-Mar-2004 Beta test version of Barry's Emacs V7.2-237 is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

Some bug fixes, Better X11 cut and paste, python 2.3 support and some minor new features.

7-Sep-2002 Barry's Emacs V7.2-208 is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.