@c -*- coding: utf-8 -*- @c This is part of the Emacs manual. @c Copyright (C) 2005-2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc. @c See file emacs.texi for copying conditions. @node Antinews @appendix Emacs 25 Antinews @c Update the emacs.texi Antinews menu entry with the above version number. For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about downgrading to Emacs version 25.3. We hope you will enjoy the greater simplicity that results from the absence of many @w{Emacs @value{EMACSVER}} features. @itemize @bullet @item Emacs no longer defaults to requiring the GnuTLS library when you build it. Those who want the TLS functionality built-in will have to explicitly request it at build time---or forever hold their peace. We decided that having the TLS functionality doesn't justify annoying users or package builders with error messages about libgnutls absence. We also decided that if you do build with GnuTLS, we will allow versions of the library older than 2.12.2, as that version will become less and less available/popular as you move farther back in time. @item For similar reasons, we've reverted back to building our own version of @command{movemail} that retrieves POP3 mail as clear text via insecure channels. As you move back in time, the availability of secure alternatives to POP3 will diminish, and we are only keen to support that. We've also removed the @option{--with-mailutils} configure-time option, as it no longer makes sense for the observable past. @item We have removed support for @command{systemd} and similar services: we no longer provide a user init file for enabling Emacs support via those services, and we removed from the Emacs server the socket-launching support important for Emacs client operation under these services. Again, these services will lose popularity as you move back in time, so the code supporting them will be just dead code, bloating Emacs unnecessarily. @item Reproducible builds of Emacs are no longer supported, as past development will make that unnecessary. @item The @option{--fg-daemon} is gone, leaving only @option{--daemon}. No need to procrastinate on the dilemma whether you do or do not want the new shiny ``headless Emacs'' thingy. Hail, simplicity! @item As text terminals supporting true color will lose ground as you move back in time, we've removed support for 24-bit colors on text terminals. If you want colors on a text terminal, you should be fine with just 8 of them. (Truth being told, we think text terminals should be monochrome, but you will have to keep downgrading to older Emacs versions to have that feature back.) @item Emacs 25.3 no longer supports magic signatures of the form @samp{#!/usr/bin/env @var{interpreter}} in scripts. Moving back in time means you are getting closer to the ideal of the original Unix design where all the interpreters lived in a single directory @file{/bin}, so this fancy feature is simply becoming unnecessary ballast. @item The double-buffering feature of Emacs display on X has been removed. We decided that its complexity and a few random surprising side-effects aren't justified by the gains, even though those gains were hailed in some quarters. Yes, Emacs 25.3 will flicker in some use cases, but we are sure Emacs users will be able to suck it, as they have been doing for years. Since this feature is gone, we've also removed the @code{inhibit-double-buffering} frame parameter, which is now unnecessary. @item Non-breaking hyphens and ASCII characters displayed instead of unsupported quote characters are now again displayed using the @code{escape-glyph} face. We think having a single face instead of 3 different ones will make Emacs customization a much simpler job for users. For the same reason, we've removed the @code{header-line-highlight} face, leaving just @code{highlight} for any element of the Emacs display besides the mode line. @item You can no longer disable attempts of recovery from fatal exceptions such as C stack overflows and fatal signals. Since the recovery included in Emacs is reliable enough, we decided there was no reason to put your edits in danger of becoming lost when these situations happen. The variables @code{attempt-stack-overflow-recovery} and @code{attempt-orderly-shutdown-on-fatal-signal} are therefore removed. @item The @code{list-timers} command was removed, as we decided timers are not a user-level feature, and therefore users should not be allowed to mess with them. Ask an Emacs Lisp guru near you for help if you have a runaway timer in your session. (Of course, as you move back in time, such runaway timers will become less and less frequent, and actually timers might start shutting down automatically, as they cannot cope with time reversal.) @item Horizontal scrolling using the mouse or touchpad has been removed. In the past, wide monitors will become less popular, so horizontal scrolling will no longer be needed. Removal of the mouse support for horizontal scrolling is the first step towards its complete removal in prior Emacs versions. @item We have found the @option{--tramp} option of @command{emacsclient} too risky and too complicated, so we removed it to simplify the client code and its usage. @item The @code{display-raw-bytes-as-hex} variable is gone, so raw bytes can only be displayed as octal escapes. Emacs users should be able to convert from octal to any other base in their sleep! @item Displaying line numbers for a buffer is only possibly using add-on features, such as @code{linum-mode}, which can only display the numbers in the display margins. Line-number display using these features is also slow, as we firmly believe such a feature is un-Emacsy and should not have been included in Emacs to begin with. Consequently, @code{display-line-numbers-mode} was removed. @item On our permanent quest for simplifying Emacs, we've removed the support for passing command-line arguments and options to Emacs via the @option{--alternate-editor} option of @command{emacsclient} and @env{ALTERNATE_EDITOR} environment variable. There's only one True Emacs---the one that comes up when invoked as @kbd{emacs}, no need for all those fancy options! @item The complication known as ``single-line horizontal scrolling'' is no longer with you in Emacs 25.3. This feature was a bow to ``other editors''; instead, let those other editors bow to Emacs by hscrolling the entire window at all times. Repeat after me: ``The Emacs way is the Only Way!'' @item The fancy case conversions of non-ASCII characters used in several locales, like Turkish and Greek, are removed, leaving the relations between upper and lower letter-case simple again, as they were in 7-bit ASCII. Likewise with ligatures that turn into multiple characters when their letter-case changes---gone. @item Enchant is no longer supported by @code{ispell-buffer} and similar spell-checking commands. As Enchant will gradually disappear while you move back in time, its support will become unnecessary anyway. @item Tramp lost its support for Google Drive repositories. Cloud storage is on its way to extinction as you move back in time, thus making this feature redundant. @item Several commands, deemed to be unnecessary complications, have been removed. Examples include @code{replace-buffer-contents} and @code{apropos-local-variable}. @item To keep up with decreasing computer memory capacity and disk space, many other functions and files have been eliminated in Emacs 25.3. @end itemize