Subject: [PATCH] Remove very old NEWS from the FAQ

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2021 03:31:39 +0200

Severity: wishlist

The section in the Emacs FAQ about NEWS in various Emacs versions
going back to version 20 is interesting as a historical exercise, but
probably not relevant in an FAQ.

I suggest we remove anything older than Emacs 24 at this point.  See
the attached patch.
From 444076703ac9a6b3e04d576bd26a3ff7a0965005 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2021 03:29:18 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Remove very old NEWS from the FAQ

* doc/misc/efaq.texi (New in Emacs 23, New in Emacs 22)
(New in Emacs 21, New in Emacs 20): Delete sections.
(Status of Emacs): Update menu.
---
 doc/misc/efaq.texi | 196 +--------------------------------------------
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 195 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/misc/efaq.texi b/doc/misc/efaq.texi
index 1514dbe265..8aa95228dd 100644
--- a/doc/misc/efaq.texi
+++ b/doc/misc/efaq.texi
@@ -900,14 +900,11 @@ Status of Emacs
 @menu
 * Origin of the term Emacs::
 * Latest version of Emacs::
+@c Remove anything below that is older than four major releases or so.
 * New in Emacs 27::
 * New in Emacs 26::
 * New in Emacs 25::
 * New in Emacs 24::
-* New in Emacs 23::
-* New in Emacs 22::
-* New in Emacs 21::
-* New in Emacs 20::
 @end menu
 
 @node Origin of the term Emacs
@@ -1280,197 +1277,6 @@ New in Emacs 24
 As always, consult the @file{NEWS} file for more information.

-@node New in Emacs 23
-@section What is different about Emacs 23?
-@cindex Differences between Emacs 22 and Emacs 23
-@cindex Emacs 23, new features in
-
-@itemize
-
-@cindex Anti-aliased fonts
-@cindex Freetype fonts
-@item
-Emacs has a new font code that can use multiple font backends,
-including freetype and fontconfig.  Emacs can use the Xft library for
-anti-aliasing, and the otf and m17n libraries for complex text layout and
-text shaping.
-
-@cindex Unicode
-@cindex Character sets
-@item
-The Emacs character set is now a superset of Unicode.  Several new
-language environments have been added.
-
-@cindex Multi-tty support
-@cindex X and tty displays
-@item
-Emacs now supports using both X displays and ttys in the same session
-(@samp{multi-tty}).
-
-@cindex Daemon mode
-@item
-Emacs can be started as a daemon in the background.
-
-@cindex NeXTstep port
-@cindex GNUstep port
-@cindex macOS Cocoa
-@item
-There is a new NeXTstep port of Emacs.  This supports GNUstep and Mac OS
-X (via the Cocoa libraries).  The Carbon port of Emacs, which supported
-Mac OS X in Emacs 22, has been removed.
-
-@cindex Directory-local variables
-@item
-Directory-local variables can now be defined, in a similar manner to
-file-local variables.
-
-@item
-Transient Mark mode is on by default.
-
-@end itemize
-
-@noindent
-Other changes include: support for serial port access; D-Bus bindings; a
-new Visual Line mode for line-motion; improved completion; a new mode
-(@samp{DocView}) for viewing of PDF, PostScript, and DVI documents; nXML
-mode (for editing XML documents) is included; VC has been updated for
-newer version control systems; etc.
-
-
-@node New in Emacs 22
-@section What is different about Emacs 22?
-@cindex Differences between Emacs 21 and Emacs 22
-@cindex Emacs 22, new features in
-
-@itemize
-@cindex GTK+ Toolkit
-@cindex Drag-and-drop
-@item
-Emacs can be built with GTK+ widgets, and supports drag-and-drop
-operation on X.
-
-@cindex Supported systems
-@item
-Emacs 22 features support for GNU/Linux systems on S390 and x86-64
-machines, as well as support for the Mac OS X and Cygwin operating
-systems.
-
-@item
-The native MS-Windows, and Mac OS X builds include full support
-for images, toolbar, and tooltips.
-
-@item
-Font Lock mode, Auto Compression mode, and File Name Shadow Mode are
-enabled by default.
-
-@item
-The maximum size of buffers is increased: on 32-bit machines, it is
-256 MBytes for Emacs 23.1, and 512 MBytes for Emacs 23.2 and above.
-
-@item
-Links can be followed with @kbd{mouse-1}, in addition to @kbd{mouse-2}.
-
-@cindex Mouse wheel
-@item
-Mouse wheel support is enabled by default.
-
-@item
-Window fringes are customizable.
-
-@item
-The mode line of the selected window is now highlighted.
-
-@item
-The minibuffer prompt is displayed in a distinct face.
-
-@item
-Abbrev definitions are read automatically at startup.
-
-@item
-Grep mode is separate from Compilation mode and has many new options and
-commands specific to grep.
-
-@item
-The original Emacs macro system has been replaced by the new Kmacro
-package, which provides many new commands and features and a simple
-interface that uses the function keys F3 and F4.  Macros are stored in a
-macro ring, and can be debugged and edited interactively.
-
-@item
-The Grand Unified Debugger (GUD) can be used with a full graphical user
-interface to GDB; this provides many features found in traditional
-development environments, making it easy to manipulate breakpoints, add
-watch points, display the call stack, etc.  Breakpoints are visually
-indicated in the source buffer.
-
-@item
-@cindex New modes
-Many new modes and packages have been included in Emacs, such as Calc,
-TRAMP, URL, IDO, CUA, ERC, rcirc, Table, Image-Dired, SES, Ruler, Org,
-PGG, Flymake, Password, Printing, Reveal, wdired, t-mouse, longlines,
-savehist, Conf mode, Python mode, DNS mode, etc.
-
-@cindex Multilingual Environment
-@item
-Leim is now part of Emacs.  Unicode support has been much improved, and
-the following input methods have been added: belarusian, bulgarian-bds,
-bulgarian-phonetic, chinese-sisheng, croatian, dutch, georgian,
-latin-alt-postfix, latin-postfix, latin-prefix, latvian-keyboard,
-lithuanian-numeric, lithuanian-keyboard, malayalam-inscript, rfc1345,
-russian-computer, sgml, slovenian, tamil-inscript, ucs,
-ukrainian-computer, vietnamese-telex, and welsh.
-
-The following language environments have also been added: Belarusian,
-Bulgarian, Chinese-EUC-TW, Croatian, French, Georgian, Italian, Latin-6,
-Latin-7, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish,
-Tajik, Tamil, UTF-8, Ukrainian, Welsh, and Windows-1255.
-
-@cindex Documentation
-@cindex Emacs Lisp Manual
-@item
-In addition, Emacs 22 now includes the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
-(@pxref{Emacs Lisp documentation}) and the Emacs Lisp Intro.
-@end itemize
-
-
-@node New in Emacs 21
-@section What is different about Emacs 21?
-@cindex Differences between Emacs 20 and Emacs 21
-@cindex Emacs 21, new features in
-
-@cindex Variable-size fonts
-@cindex Toolbar support
-Emacs 21 features a thorough rewrite of the display engine.  The new
-display engine supports variable-size fonts, images, and can play sounds
-on platforms which support that.  As a result, the visual appearance of
-Emacs, when it runs on a windowed display, is much more reminiscent of
-modern GUI programs, and includes 3D widgets (used for the mode line and
-the scroll bars), a configurable and extensible toolbar, tooltips
-(a.k.a.@: balloon help), and other niceties.
-
-@cindex Colors on text-only terminals
-@cindex TTY colors
-In addition, Emacs 21 supports faces on text-only terminals.  This means
-that you can now have colors when you run Emacs on a GNU/Linux console
-and on @code{xterm} with @kbd{emacs -nw}.
-
-
-@node New in Emacs 20
-@section What is different about Emacs 20?
-@cindex Differences between Emacs 19 and Emacs 20
-@cindex Emacs 20, new features in
-
-The differences between Emacs versions 18 and 19 were rather dramatic;
-the introduction of frames, faces, and colors on windowing systems was
-obvious to even the most casual user.
-
-There are differences between Emacs versions 19 and 20 as well, but many
-are more subtle or harder to find.  Among the changes are the inclusion
-of MULE code for languages that use non-Latin characters and for mixing
-several languages in the same document; the ``Customize'' facility for
-modifying variables without having to use Lisp; and automatic conversion
-of files from Macintosh, Microsoft, and Unix platforms.
-
 @c ------------------------------------------------------------
 @node Common requests
 @chapter Common requests
-- 
2.30.2