efaq: New in Emacs 24
4.4 What is different about Emacs 24?
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• Emacs now includes a package manager. Type ‘M-x list-packages’ to
get started. You can use this to download and automatically
install many more Lisp packages.
• Emacs Lisp now supports lexical binding on a per-file basis. In
_lexical binding_, variable references must be located textually
within the binding construct. This contrasts with _dynamic
binding_, where programs can refer to variables defined outside
their local textual scope. A Lisp file can use a local variable
setting of ‘lexical-binding: t’ to indicate that the contents
should be interpreted using lexical binding. See the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual for more details.
• Some human languages, such as English, are written from left to
right. Others, such as Arabic, are written from right to left.
Emacs now has support for any mixture of these forms—this is
“bidirectional text”.
• Handling of text selections has been improved, and now integrates
better with external clipboards.
• A new command ‘customize-themes’ allows you to easily change the
appearance of your Emacs.
• Emacs can be compiled with the GTK+ 3 toolkit.
• Support for several new external libraries can be included at
compile time:
• “Security-Enhanced Linux” (SELinux) is a Linux kernel feature
that provides more sophisticated file access controls than
ordinary “Unix-style” file permissions.
• The ImageMagick display library. This allows you to display
many more image format in Emacs, as well as carry out
transformations such as rotations.
• The GnuTLS library for secure network communications. Emacs
uses this transparently for email if your mail server supports
it.
• The libxml2 library for parsing XML structures.
• Much more flexibility in the handling of windows and buffer
display.
As always, consult the ‘NEWS’ file for more information.
Info Catalog
efaq: New in Emacs 25
efaq: Status of Emacs
efaq: New in Emacs 23