For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about downgrading to Emacs version 20. We hope you will enjoy the greater simplicity that results from the absence of many Emacs 21 features.

• The display engine has been greatly simplified by eliminating support for variable-size characters and other non-text display features. This avoids the complexity of display layout in Emacs 21. To wit:
  • Variable-size characters are not supported in Emacs 20. You cannot use fonts which contain oversized characters, and using italic fonts can result in illegible display. However, text which uses variable-size fonts is unreadable anyway. With all characters in a frame laid out on a regular grid, each character having the same height and width, text is much easier to read.
  • Emacs does not display images, or play sounds. It just displays text, as you would expect from a text editor.
  • ...

"Emacs 20 Antinews," GNU Emacs 21 Manual