Release 7.4

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

Dear all,

here it is, release 7.4, my final release before Bastien takes
over in Januari.  There is not a huge amount of new features,
but I want to hand over with a pretty clean state, so this is
the sole reason for releasing now.  Not all the patches in the
queue made it, these will be taken care of in the next few days.

Thanks to the many contributors to this release.

As always:  Enjoy!

- Carsten

                              Version 7.4
                              ===========

Incompatible changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Agenda: rework ndays and span handling
=======================================

The variable =org-agenda-ndays= is obsolete - please use
=org-agenda-span= instead.

Thanks to Julien Danjou for this.

Details
~~~~~~~~

Improvements with inline tasks and indentation
===============================================

There is now a configurable way on how to export inline tasks.  See
the new variable =org-inlinetask-export-templates=.

Thanks to Nicolas Goaziou for coding these changes.

Agenda: Added a bulk "scattering" command
==========================================

=B S= in the agenda buffer will cause tasks to be rescheduled a random
number of days into the future, with 7 as the default.  This is useful
if you've got a ton of tasks scheduled for today, you realize you'll
never deal with them all, and you just want them to be distributed
across the next N days.  When called with a prefix arg, rescheduling
will avoid weekend days.

Thanks to John Wiegley for this.

In-buffer completion is now done using John Wiegleys pcomplete.el
==================================================================

Thanks to John Wiegley for much of this code.

Sending radio tables from org buffers is now allowed
=====================================================

Org radio tables can no also be sent inside Org buffers.  Also,
there is a new hook which get called after a table has been sent.

Thanks to Seweryn Kokot.

Command names shown in manual
==============================

The reference manual now lists command names for most commands.
Thanks to Andreas Röhler who started this project.

Allow ap/pm times in agenda time grid
======================================

Times in the agenda can now be displayed in am/pm format.  See the new
variable =org-agenda-timegrid-use-ampm=.  Thanks to C. A. Webber for
a patch to this effect.

Rewriten clock table code
==========================

The entire clocktable code has been rewritten to add more options and
to make hacking time reports easier.

Thanks to Erwin Vrolijk for a patch introducing clock tables for
quarters.

Babel
======

Add =msosql= engine to sql code blocks
---------------------------------------
SQL code blocks can now be executed using the =myosql= engine on
Windows systems.

Thanks to Sebastien Vauban for this contribution.

Python code blocks now accept a =preamble= header argument
-----------------------------------------------------------
This allows specification of coding declarations and library imports
which must take place in the beginning of a file of executed python
code (note this header argument is used during code block evaluation
unlike the =shebang= header argument which is used during tangling).
For example


   #+begin_src python :preamble # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- :return s
   s = "é"
   #+end_src

Thanks to Vincent Beffara for this idea.

Code block name is shown during evaluation query
-------------------------------------------------
When the user is queried about the evaluation of a named code block
the name of the code block is now displayed.

Thanks to Tom Dye for this suggestion.

Clojure code blocks results insertion
--------------------------------------
The results of Clojure code blocks have been improved in two ways.
1. lazy sequences are now expanded for insertion into the Org-mode
    buffer
2. pretty printing of results is now possible with both "code" and
    "data" pretty print formats

Thanks to Rick Moynihan for suggesting these changes.

Python code blocks now accept a =:return= header argument
----------------------------------------------------------
This alleviates the need to explicitly insert return statements into
the bode of Python code blocks.  This change both
- allows the same python code blocks to be run both in sessions and
   externally
- removes the floating =return= statements which violated python
   syntax

Thanks to Darlan Cavalcante for proposing this feature.

=:results wrap= header argument wraps code block results
---------------------------------------------------------
The new =:results wrap= wraps code blocks results in a custom
environment making it possible to offset their contents during
export.  For example


   #+begin_src emacs-lisp :results wrap
     "code block results"
   #+end_src

   #+results:
   #+BEGIN_RESULT
   code block results
   #+END_RESULT

Thanks to Sebastien Vauban for persistently suggesting this enhancement.

Code block error buffer wiped clean between executions
-------------------------------------------------------
Previously the code block error buffer accumulated errors making it
difficult to distinguish between previous and current errors.  This
buffer is now cleaned before every interactive code block evaluation.

Lists now recognized by code blocks
------------------------------------
It is now possible for code blocks to both read and write list
contents from and to Org-mode buffers.  For example


   #+results: a-list
   - babel
   - and
   - org-mode

   #+source: a-list
   #+begin_src emacs-lisp :var lst=a-list :results list
     (reverse lst)
   #+end_src

Calc added as a supported code block language
----------------------------------------------
The Emacs Calc package can be used through =calc= code blocks allowing
both regular arithmetic operations as well as stack based
calculation.  For example


   #+source: calc-stack
   #+begin_src calc
     8
     1
     '+
     9
     '*
   #+end_src

   #+results: calc-stack
   81

   #+source: calc-arithmetic
   #+begin_src calc :var in=calc-stack
     in / 9
   #+end_src

   #+results: calc-arithmetic
   9

"org-babel-detangle" propagates change to source code files into code  
blocks
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
`org-babel-detangle' can be used to propagate changes to pure source
code files tangled from embedded code blocks in Org-mode files back to
the original code blocks in the Org-mode file.  This can be used on
collaborative projects to keep embedded code blocks up to date with
edits made in pure source code files.