ttn-pers-elisp 1.43 available

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

greetings earthlings,

after a half-year of various hardware/software/wetware anomolies,
ttn-pers-elisp development has finally migrated to emacs 21 (cvs, no
less).  this release reflects some pining for 20.7 (if not for the
200MHz p2, hee hee) but that will probably fade As Time Goes By.

tarball and expanded dist in:

  http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/ttn-pers-elisp/
  http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/ttn-pers-elisp/dist/

NEWS excerpt follows.  bug reports and comments welcome, as always.

in other news, emacs 21 on vms proceeding slowly but surely; expect a
preliminary release (for those w/ adventurous spirit) w/in the month.

thi

________________________________________________
 - VERSION 1.43 (released 2003-09-08)
 
   - HTML suppressed in RMAIL
 
        The excellent rmime.el package is now configured like so:
 
        ;; Never show the ugliness that is HTML!  YUK!  PUKE!
        (defalias 'rmime-text/html 'rmime-*/*)
        (put 'rmime-text/html 'rmime-unwise t)
 
   - New commands: ch-cvs-state, release-cvs-file
 
        These are analogous to `ch-rcs-state' (change the "state" of a
        file generally) and `release-rcs-file' (change to the specific
        tag "Rel"), respectively, for CVS files.
 
   - New command: jamenv-from-file
 
        This calls `jamenv' on the specified file.  See docstring.
 
   - if-window-system.el also loaded if `display-color-p'
 
        Previously, `window-system' nil inhibited loading of
        if-window-system.el (duh).  However, Emacs 21 can support
        colors even on a tty, so we handle that case, too.
 
   - gnugo.el rewritten to use Go Text Protocol
 
        This is still largely experimental.  The version distributed
        here corresponds to 1.26 in <http://www.glug.org/alt/gnugo/>.
        (There is also an updated make-xpms-file.el in mokuxpms.tar.gz
        that fixes a small bug in how the generated file is loaded,
        in that directory.)
 
   - New command: wcat
 
        This simply calls "wget -O-" on the url at point.
 
   - New command: psql
 
        This simply calls "ttn-do psql", q.v., in a comint buffer,
        after querying for a database name to access.
 
   - New commands: insert-zonkme, scan-zonkme
 
        These are primarily useful for maintenance of Scheme programs
        that in turn maintain glug.org.  A "zonkme" is a form that
        changes the `%load-path' like so:
 
          (set! %load-path (cons "/home/ttn/build/ps" %load-path))
 
        `insert-zonkme' adds this as well as a distinctive comment
        recognized by `scan-zonkme' to decide (later) whether or not to
        remove the form.  To see which programs are currently guilty of
        this heinous practice, see "load-path mungers" scripts at
        <http://www.glug.org/maint/cron-job-stats.html>.
 
   - New command: gdb-guile-display-scm
 
        This finds the symbol at point and requests a guile running
        under gdb process to display its value.  You can use var
        `gdb-guile-backend-method' to specify which kind of support to
        use: either common .gdbinit command "gp", or internal support.
 
   - C-x C-q jammed to `vc-toggle-read-only'
 
        Emacs 21 bound this to simply `toggle-read-only' in a (IMHO)
        misguided attempt to reduce confusion.  Kill that noise.
 
   - Mailcrypt loaded by `C-x m' also
 
        It used to be that only RMAIL init would by side effect also set
        up mailcrypt, so `C-x m' would lose until RMAIL was loaded; now
        both initial command paths set up mailcrypt.
 
   - RMAIL expunges w/o confirmation
 
        Emacs 21 added variable `rmail-confirm-expunge' (default: t).
        We set to nil to get the old behavior (delete it, dammit).
 
   - Hideshow minor mode is now turned off when doing Ediff
 
        Ediff gets confused by the hidden blocks, so spare it.
 
   - Env var MANWIDTH automatically set on `M-x man'
 
        Manpages now fill more of the screen if the screen is more than
        80 columns wide.  This may be unacceptably slow on old machines.
 
   - Incremental search backspace now deletes only one char from searchtext
 
        Thanks go to whoever posted the code on gnu.emacs.help.
 
   - Mode line subjected to curmudgeonly manglings
 
        Emacs 21 changed the default `mode-line-format', so we take some
        pains to recreate the pleasant layout of years past.  Version
        control info is still out of place, but that's fine for now.
 
   - Scheme mode used for .laml, .af, .twerp and .html-data files
 
        See <http://www.cs.auc.dk/~normark/laml/> for info on LAML.
 
        See <http://www.glug.org/alt/guile-1.4.1.94.tar.gz> for info
        on Autofrisk and TWERP files.
 
        See <http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/ttn-pers-scheme/>
        for info on HTML-DATA files.
 
        (Unsurprisingly, these file formats look like Scheme code.)
 
   - Changes to `dict' and `thesaurus'
 
        You can now specify the program (and its args) to use for
        formatting a web page to stdout given a URL, with the variable
        `dict-method'.  The default value is: ("w3m" "-dump").
 
        Also, these commands now trim left-side, right-side and bottom
        noise, in addition to top noise.
 
   - Dropped imports: crypt++.el, python-mode.el
 
        The latter went all this time w/o entry in THANKS, so a belated
        thanks goes out to Barry A. Warsaw and Tim Peters.
 
   - New support for VMS
 
        The DCL script VMSCONFIG.COM can be used to configure the
        package (for in-place use) on VMS systems.  The ~/.emacs needs
        to load the SETUP-TTN-PERS-ELISP.EL manually, after which it is
        fine to call `setup-ttn-pers-elisp', q.v.

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