(shiftf): Fix more. Simplify.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
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1This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
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4* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
5
6This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
8version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
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9dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
10around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
11incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
12". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
13directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
14variables).
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15
16The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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17`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
18when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
19unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
20run the script like this:
21
173de997 22 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
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23
24(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
25the script).
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26
27Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
28Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
29
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30* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
31
32Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
33version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
34necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
35__MSVCRT__, like so:
36
37 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
38
39* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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40
41The error message might be something like this:
42
43 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
44 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
45 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
46 '0xffffffff'
47 Stop.
48
49This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
50which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
51`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
52endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
53or EOL conversions.
54
55The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
56change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
57in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
58which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
59mangling them.
60
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61* Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
62
63The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
64C backtrace printed by GDB:
65
66 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
67 (gdb) where
68 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
69 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
70 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
71 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
72
73This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
74of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
75but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
76other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
77distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
78GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
79following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
80distribution:
81
82 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux ecept for Yellowdog,
83 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
84 know what's really going on here. */
85 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
86 0x10000000. */
87 #if defined __linux__
88 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
89 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
90 #endif
91 #endif
92 #endif /* 0 */
93
94Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
95the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
96should now succeed.
97
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98* JPEG images aren't displayed.
99
100This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
101Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
102
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103* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
104
105This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
106defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
107patch to assert.h should solve this:
108
109*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
110--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
111***************
112*** 41,47 ****
113 /*
114 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
115 */
116! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
117
118 #else /* debugging enabled */
119
120--- 41,47 ----
121 /*
122 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
123 */
124! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
125
126 #else /* debugging enabled */
127
128
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129
130* Improving performance with slow X connections
131
132If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
133language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by
134configuring Emacs with option `--without-xim'. Configuring Emacs
135without XIM does not affect the use of Emacs' own input methods, which
136are part of the Leim package.
137
138If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
139switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
140
141* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
142
143By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
144FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
145current keymap to a file with the command
146
147 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
148
149Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
150definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
151key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
152to look like this
153
154 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
155
156to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
157
158 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
159
160* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
161
162A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
163into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
164incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
165other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
166been filed.
167
168* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
169
170This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
1712.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
172event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
173Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
174
175A workaround for this is to add something like
176
177emacs.waitForWM: false
178
179to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
180frame's parameter list, like this:
181
182 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
183
184(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
185
186* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
187
188This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
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189Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
190neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
191problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
192`.emacs'.
193
194To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
195type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
196property.
61638355 197
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198* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
199click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
200is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
201problem disappears.
202
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203* There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
204XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
205one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
206If you try it and it does not work, try rebuilding Emacs with the
207toolkit version you actually want to use.
208
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209* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
210
211This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
212a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
213--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
214
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215* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
216
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217Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
218emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
219entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
220"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
221supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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222Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
223uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
224"colors".
225
226In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
227``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
228back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
229use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
230doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
231sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
232it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
233capability).
234
235Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
236attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
237incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
238this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 239
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240Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
241of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 242entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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243`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
244emulator.
ed85f61d 245
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246Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
247Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
248Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
249recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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250global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
251`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 252
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253* Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
254
255This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
256ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
257These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
258the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
259(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
260blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
261cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
262always blinks.
263
264A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
265enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
266the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
267cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
268the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
269cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
270
271To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
272`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
273the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
274produce a modified terminfo entry.
275
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276Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
277change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
278
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279* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
280
281The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
282emulation for which it is set up.
283
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284Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
285Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
286On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
287--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
288successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
289lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
290menu placement.
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291
292On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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293locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
294what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
295developers.
339b95d5 296
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297* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
298
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299Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images and the tool bar.
300Support for these will be added in future versions.
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302Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
303is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menu items is not
304displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
305synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
306waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
307pop-up menu interaction.
f936978f 308
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309There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
310mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
311frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
312after moving back into it.
b87207a0 313
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314Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
315not as severely as in 21.1.
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316
317Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
318characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
319
320An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
321Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
322
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323Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
324These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
325the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
326characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
327work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
328you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
329the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
330ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
331appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
332yet.)
333
334Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
335applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
336is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
337but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
338means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
339Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
340Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
341set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
342
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343* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
344
345This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
346libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
347install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
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348where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
349probably isn't limited to that system.
c8d9b4ee 350
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351You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
352and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
353which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
354which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
355generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
c8d9b4ee 356
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357(If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
358libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
c8d9b4ee 359
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360* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
361
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362This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
363(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
364(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
365configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
366files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
367left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
368itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
369Emacs excutable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 370
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371In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
372machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
373(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
374This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
375
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376If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
377(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
378you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
379force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
380problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
381blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
382`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
383options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
384`/etc/auto.home'.
385
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386Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
387a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
388waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
389to work around the problem.
d9810886 390
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391Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
392onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
393you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
394`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
395
396 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
397
398The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
399
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400* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
401
402This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
403via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
404binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
405
406 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
407
408We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
409build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
410
9ed04369 411* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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412
413Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
414other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
415that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
416size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
417when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
418fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
419
420To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
421
422 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
423
424If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
425problem.
426
427The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
428`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
429`xset fp rehash'.
430
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431* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
432src/s/hpux10.h.
433
434* Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
435libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
436
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437* Font Lock displays portions of the bufefr in incorrect faces.
438
439By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
440`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
441any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
442vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
443parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
444in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
445patological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
446introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
447through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
448to the end of a very large buffer.
449
450If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
451makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
452fontification by setting the variable
453`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
454be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
455
456Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
457in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
458
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459* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
460
461Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
462MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
463port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
464keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
465of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
466
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467* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
468
469If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
470due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
471and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
472port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
473are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
474confuses ange-ftp.
475
476The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
477(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
478Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' directory. To
479force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the variable
480`ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the client's
481executable. For example:
482
483 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
484
485If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
486this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
487
488 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
489
490
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491* The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
492with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
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493fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
494work.
495
496Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
497If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
498CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
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499
500diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
501--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
502+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
503@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
504 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
505 (error nil))))
506 (t
507- (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
508+ ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
509+ (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
510 (condition-case ()
511 (progn
512 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
513diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
514--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
515+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
516@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
517+;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
518+;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
519+
520+(require 'w3-e19)
521+(provide 'w3-e21)
522
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523* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
524are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
525so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
526Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
527
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528* The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
529`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
49e37720 530longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.2 fix that.
e1f9a6b3 531
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532--- psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:23:31 1.1
533+++ psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:24:22
534@@ -264,4 +264,4 @@
e1f9a6b3
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535 ; inhibit-read-only
536- (before-change-function nil)
537- (after-change-function nil))
538+ (before-change-functions nil)
539+ (after-change-functions nil))
540 (setq selective-display t)
49e37720 541@@ -1544,3 +1544,3 @@
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542 (buffer-read-only nil)
543- (before-change-function nil)
544+ (before-change-functions nil)
545 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
49e37720 546@@ -1596,3 +1596,3 @@
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DL
547 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
548- (let (before-change-function
549+ (let (before-change-functions
550 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
49e37720 551@@ -1613,3 +1613,3 @@
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552 (re-found nil)
553- before-change-function)
554+ before-change-functions)
555 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
49e37720 556@@ -1646,3 +1646,3 @@
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557 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
558- (let ((before-change-function nil))
559+ (let ((before-change-functions nil))
560 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
2f9c7108 561Index: psgml-other.el
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562--- psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:23:42 1.1
563+++ psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:30:05
e1f9a6b3
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564@@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
565 (require 'easymenu)
566+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
567
568@@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
569 (let ((submenu
570- (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
571- sgml-max-menu-size))))
572+;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
573+;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
574+ (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
575+ (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
576+ sgml-max-menu-size))
577+ new) nil)
578+ new)))
579 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
49e37720 580@@ -113,9 +119,10 @@
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581 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
582- (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
583- (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
584 (after-change-functions nil)
585- (before-change-functions nil))
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586+ (before-change-functions nil)
587+ (modified (buffer-modified-p))
588+ (buffer-undo-list t)
589+ deactivate-mark)
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590 (put-text-property start end 'face face)
591- (when (< start end)
592- (put-text-property (1- end) end 'rear-nonsticky '(face)))))
e1f9a6b3 593+ (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
49e37720 594+ (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
e1f9a6b3 595 (t
2f9c7108 596Index: psgml-parse.el
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DL
597--- psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:23:57 1.1
598+++ psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:29:56
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DL
599@@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
600
601+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
602+
603 \f
49e37720 604@@ -2493,8 +2495,8 @@
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DL
605 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
606- (when after-change-function ;***
607- (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
608+ (when after-change-functions ;***
609+ (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
610 (current-buffer)
611- after-change-function)
612- (setq before-change-function nil
613- after-change-function nil))
614+ after-change-functions)
615+ (setq before-change-functions nil
616+ after-change-functions nil))
617 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
49e37720 618@@ -2878,6 +2880,5 @@
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DL
619 "Set initial state of parsing"
620- (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
621- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
622- (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
623- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
624+ (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
625+ (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
626+ '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
627 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
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628@@ -3925,7 +3926,7 @@
629 (sgml-need-dtd)
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630- (unless before-change-function
631- (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
632+ (unless before-change-functions
633+ (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
634 (current-buffer))
635- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
49e37720 636- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change))
e1f9a6b3 637+ (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
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DL
638+ (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change)))
639 (sgml-with-parser-syntax-ro
e1f9a6b3 640
1d297d9b
CW
641* TeX'ing the Calc manual fails.
642
643The following patches allow to build the Calc manual using texinfo.tex
644from Emacs 19.34 distribution:
645
646*** calc-maint.e~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:26 1996
647--- calc-maint.el Sun Dec 10 14:32:38 2000
648***************
649*** 308,314 ****
650 (insert "@tex\n"
651 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
652 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
653! (setq midpos (point))
654 (insert "@end tex\n")
655 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
656 (insert "@bye\n")
657--- 308,314 ----
658 (insert "@tex\n"
659 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
660 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
661! (setq midpos (point-marker))
662 (insert "@end tex\n")
663 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
664 (insert "@bye\n")
665*** Makefile.~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:24 1996
666--- Makefile Sun Dec 10 14:44:00 2000
667***************
668*** 98,106 ****
669 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
670 tex:
671 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
672! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
673 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
674! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
675 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
676 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
677 $(PURGE) calc.toc
678--- 98,106 ----
679 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
680 tex:
681 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
682! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
683 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
684! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
685 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
686 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
687 $(PURGE) calc.toc
1d297d9b 688
3d7a4ec8
EZ
689* Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
690
691As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
692characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
693etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
694different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
695which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
696encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
697text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
698into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
699buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
700
701To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
702
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703* Problems when using Emacs with UTF-8 locales
704
705Some systems, including recent versions of GNU/Linux, have terminals
706or X11 subsystems that can be configured to provide Unicode/UTF-8
707input and display. Normally, such a system sets environment variables
708such as LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL to a string which ends with a
709`.UTF-8'. For example, a system like this in a French locale might
710use `fr_FR.UTF-8' as the value of LANG.
711
712Since Unicode support in Emacs, as of v21.1, is not yet complete (see
713the previous entry in this file), UTF-8 support is not enabled by
714default, even in UTF-8 locales. Thus, some Emacs features, such as
715non-ASCII keyboard input, might appear to be broken in these locales.
716To solve these problems, you need to turn on some options in your
717`.emacs' file. Specifically, the following customizations should make
718Emacs work correctly with UTF-8 input and text:
719
720 (setq locale-coding-system 'utf-8)
721 (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
722 (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
723 (set-selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
724 (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
725
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726* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
727
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DL
728This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
729slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
730e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
731Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
732correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 733
6343352f
EZ
734* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
735
736The error message might be something like this:
737
738 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
739
740This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
741built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
742for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
743corrects that.
744
f4f4ee4d
GM
745* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
746from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
747shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
748These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
749library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
750
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EZ
751Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
752process invokes Emacs several times.
753
f4f4ee4d
GM
754On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
755environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
756can be found.
757
758Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
759Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
760specified run-time search path in the executable.
761
762Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
763
0c6456ad 764* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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765C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
766compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
767release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
768another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
769and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 770
b1739b51
EZ
771* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
772
773The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
774following message:
775
776 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
777
778To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
779INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
780functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
781
782 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
783 {
784 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
785 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
786
787Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
788with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
789
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EZ
790* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
791
792A typical error message might be something like
793
794 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
795
796This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
797Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
798are:
799
800 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
801
802 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
803 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
804 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
805
806One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
807fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
808the problematic line(s) and correct them.
809
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810* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
811
812The typical error message might be like this:
813
814 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
815
816This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
817tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
818files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
819Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
820when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
821required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
822its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
823
824Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
825file could fail to load if it is compressed.
826
827The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
828file.
829
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830* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
831
832If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
833representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
f2d176f2
CW
834ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
835version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
836systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
837ftp client. On a Debian system, type
f3d6f4ee 838
f2d176f2 839 update-alternatives --config ftp
f3d6f4ee
EZ
840
841and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
842
9f83d8b3
EZ
843* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
844
845The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
846work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
847was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
848work when an antivirus package is installed.
849
850The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
851mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
852or disable it entirely.
853
f29d1e75
JR
854* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
855
856This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
857when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
858cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
859ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
860
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861* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
862mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
863exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
864seen.
865
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866* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
867
868This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
869Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
870modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
871keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
872modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
873was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
874Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
875
876The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
877modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
878and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
879which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
880the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
881modifier:
882
883 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
884
885A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
886is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
887
888 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
889
890This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
891keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
892keys can serve as Meta.
893
894The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
895keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
896
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DL
897* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
898remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
899keyboard(5).
900
901Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
902% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
903% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
904
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DL
905* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
906
907Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
908It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
909system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
910the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
911
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912* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
913
914This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
915and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
916manager.
917
918This bug was reported to Sun as
919
920 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
921 Bug Reports: 4463537
922
2aa82bcf 923Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
0de9f9a8
EZ
924reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
925library xiiimp.so.
926
927Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
928the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
929can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
930
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931* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
932
933This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
934assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
935To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
936or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
a933dad1
DL
937Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
938
939* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
940
941Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
942
943 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
944 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
945 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
946 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
947 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
948 /******************************************************************
949
950 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
951 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
952 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
953 XLCd lcd;
954 {
955 - char* begin;
956 - char* end;
957 + char* begin = NULL;
958 + char* end = NULL;
959 char* ret;
960 int i = 0;
961 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
962 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
963 }
964 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
965 if (ret != NULL) {
966 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
967 + if (begin != NULL) {
968 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
969 + } else {
970 + ret[0] = '\0';
971 + }
972 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
973 }
974 return ret;
975
976
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DL
977* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
978
979This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
980
981* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
982
983This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
984It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
985
de121241
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986* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
987
988This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
989combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
990definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
991might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
992purposes.
993
994We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
995you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
996
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997* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
998the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
999
1000You can fix this by editing the file:
1001
1002 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
1003
1004Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
1005
1006 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1007
1008that should read:
1009
1010 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1011
1012Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
1013
1014* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
1015 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
1016
1017This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
1018Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
1019
1020* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
1021
1022Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
1023problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
1024documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
1025
1026* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1027
1028These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1029particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1030configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1031configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1032change this.
1033
1034* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
1035
1036When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
1037(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
1038then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
1039correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
1040gives the appearance of "double spacing".
1041
1042To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
1043feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
1044
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DL
1045* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
1046
1047This problem manifests itself as an error message
1048
1049 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
1050
1051The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
1052were built for an older system version,
1053
1054 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
1055
1056made the problem go away.
1057
1058* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
1059
1060This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
1061as of 8 Dec 1998.
1062
1063The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1064
1065* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1066the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1067next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1068
1069* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1070
1071This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1072a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1073likely to cause it.
1074
1075We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1076
1077* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1078
1079This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1080
1081* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1082
1083This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1084
1085* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1086Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1087`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1088'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1089
1090* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1091(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1092Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1093earlier versions.
1094
1095--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1096+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1097@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1098 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1099 (cond
1100 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1101- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1102+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1103 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1104 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1105 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1106
d238f982
EZ
1107* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1108
1109Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1110these problems.
1111
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EZ
1112* No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
1113
1114Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
1115byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
1116
d238f982 1117* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
a933dad1
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1118about a read-only tex output buffer.
1119
1120This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1121versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1122package.
1123
1124diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1125*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1126--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1127***************
1128*** 545,551 ****
1129 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1130 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1131 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1132! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1133 (set-buffer buffer)
1134 (if dir (cd dir))
1135 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1136- --- 545,552 ----
1137 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1138 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1139 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1140! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1141! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1142 (set-buffer buffer)
1143 (if dir (cd dir))
1144 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1145
1146* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1147in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1148
1149 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1150
1151This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1152003082 August 11, 1998.
1153
1154* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1155
1156The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1157 (standard-display-european t)
1158That should be changed to
1159 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1160
1161* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1162
1163You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1164supplies the `install-info' command.
1165
1166* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1167
1168To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1169rights, containing this text:
1170
1171--------------------------------
1172xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1173keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1174keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1175EOF
1176
1177xmodmap - << EOF
1178clear mod1
1179keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1180add mod1 = Meta_L
1181keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1182add mod2 = Mode_switch
1183EOF
1184--------------------------------
1185
17a37d87
EZ
1186* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1187
62c485d2
GM
1188This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1189requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1190of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1191which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1192while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1193
1194 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1195
62c485d2 1196A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1197
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1198* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1199in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1200drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1201
1202This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1203device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1204work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1205
1206* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1207
1208See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1209for character composition.
1210
1211* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1212
1213This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1214full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1215/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1216
1217127.0.0.1 localhost
1218129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1219
1220The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1221
1222* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1223
1224So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1225is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1226properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1227`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1228in Emacs.
1229
1230* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1231
3d00585e
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1232This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1233characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1234characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1235support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1236
3d00585e
EZ
1237To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1238this at your shell's prompt:
1239
1240 ispell -vv
1241
1242and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1243"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1244does not.
1245
1246To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1247in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1248Then rebuild the speller.
1249
1250Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1251version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1252
1253Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1254in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1255Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1256it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1257spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
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1258
1259* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
12605.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1261
1262This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1263One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1264known to work.
1265
1266* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1267CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1268
1269This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1270
1271Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1272events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1273distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1274combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1275AltGr has been pressed.
1276
1277* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1278
1279The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1280screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1281display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1282to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1283
1284This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1285well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1286
1287There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1288running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1289un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1290selection".
1291
1292Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1293please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1294If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1295here.
1296
1297* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1298
1299The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1300Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1301(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1302You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1303You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1304look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1305are currently recommended for your host.
1306
1307On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1308105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1309105284-18 might fix it again.
1310
3156909f
PE
1311* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1312
1313This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1314the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1315support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1316If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
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1317
1318One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1319For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1320variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1321lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1322should do.
1323
3156909f
PE
1324pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1325if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1326libraries.
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1327
1328* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1329
1330You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1331either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1332calls for specifying this.
1333
1334If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1335mail-host-address to the value you want.
1336
1337* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1338
1339Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1340virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1341the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1342error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1343exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1344memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1345
1346You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1347But you have to be root to do it.
1348
1349According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1350
1351 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1352 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1353 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1354 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1355 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1356
1357(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1358These changes take effect when you reboot.
1359
1360* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1361
1362We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1363scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1364happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1365on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1366
1367Here's how to do this:
1368
1369 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1370
1371If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1372try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1373to normal, do
1374
1375 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1376
1377* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1378
1379Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1380supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1381many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1382
1383If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1384server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1385You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1386
1387The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1388display all the characters Emacs supports.
1389
4c635a29
DL
1390Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1391missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1392character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1393but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1394of this character to display a space.
1395
a933dad1
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1396* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1397
1398You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1399
1400* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1401
1402This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1403than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1404lines do not overlap.
1405
1406* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1407video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1408
1409This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1410your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1411check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1412
1413* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1414directories that have the +t bit.
1415
1416This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1417Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1418with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1419link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1420
1421If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1422file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1423
1424* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1425commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1426
1427You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1428
1429 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1430
1431* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1432appear on disk.
1433
1434This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1435remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1436implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1437detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1438calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1439where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1440
1441* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1442
1443If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1444will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1445in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1446did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1447character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1448must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1449
1450You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1451them to two different keys.
1452
1453* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1454
1455If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1456without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1457
1458* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1459
1460Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1461NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1462entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1463listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1464the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1465old POP protocol.
1466
1467* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1468
1469This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1470use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1471an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1472happens to exist on your X server).
1473
1474* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1475
1476This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1477prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1478to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1479
1480Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1481(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1482
1483* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1484
1485We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1486the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1487does not happen.
1488
1489* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1490
1491We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1492Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1493makes the problem stop:
1494
1495105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1496105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1497106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1498105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1499
1500Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1501suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1502
1503106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1504106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1505105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1506
1507* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1508
1509`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1510The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1511
1512The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1513"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1514with the user.
1515
1516On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1517pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1518communicate with the subprocess.
1519
1520On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1521relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1522redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1523stdin.
1524
1525A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1526
1527For Perl 4:
1528
1529 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1530 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1531 ***************
1532 *** 68,74 ****
1533 $rcfile=".perldb";
1534 }
1535 else {
1536 ! $console = "con";
1537 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1538 }
1539
1540 --- 68,74 ----
1541 $rcfile=".perldb";
1542 }
1543 else {
1544 ! $console = "";
1545 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1546 }
1547
1548
1549 For Perl 5:
1550 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1551 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1552 ***************
1553 *** 22,28 ****
1554 $rcfile=".perldb";
1555 }
1556 elsif (-e "con") {
1557 ! $console = "con";
1558 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1559 }
1560 else {
1561 --- 22,28 ----
1562 $rcfile=".perldb";
1563 }
1564 elsif (-e "con") {
1565 ! $console = "";
1566 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1567 }
1568 else {
1569
1570* Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1571
1572Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1573others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1574
1575When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1576hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1577by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1578finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1579instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1580can find out the process id.
1581
1582It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1583M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1584start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1585programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1586work.
1587
1588* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1589
1590There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1591
1592 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1593 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1594 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1595
1596To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1597subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1598them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1599incorrect library functions.
1600
f1e54ce1
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1601* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1602
1603If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1604Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1605program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1606config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1607the front of your PATH environment variable.
1608
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1609* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1610like make-docfile.
1611
1612This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1613variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1614compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1615the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1616
1617* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1618run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a01325b8
EZ
1619
1620Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
a933dad1
DL
1621immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1622the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
a01325b8
EZ
1623and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1624
1625Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1626the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1627Lisp.
a933dad1
DL
1628
1629This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1630support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1631characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1632You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1633filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1634compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1635explains this issue in more detail.
1636
a01325b8
EZ
1637Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1638MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1639by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1640unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1641them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1642must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1643properly truncated.
1644
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1645* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1646
1647 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1648
1649This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1650on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1651value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1652works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1653support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1654undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1655[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1656`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1657your system works as before.
1658
1659* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1660
1661This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1662You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1663
1664* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1665
1666This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1667you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1668and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1669
1670* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1671
1672This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1673version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1674definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1675incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1676does not work with this version of ncurses.
1677
1678The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1679
1680* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1681
1682Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1683editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1684as GCC.
1685
1686* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1687on GNU/Linux systems.
1688
1689This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
16901.3.75.
1691
1692* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1693
1694There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1695caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1696problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1697is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1698
1699Using the old library version is a workaround.
1700
1701* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1702
1703This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1704version of Solaris that you are using.
1705
1706* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1707
1708Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1709102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1710Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1711by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1712However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1713
1714Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1715you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1716We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1717for certain.
1718
1719 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1720 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1721 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1722
1723(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1724with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1725
1726If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1727bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1728
1729Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1730Solaris 2.5.
1731
1732* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1733
1734If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1735of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1736called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1737
1738* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1739Emacs built with Motif.
1740
1741This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1742such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1743
1744* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1745
1746A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1747in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1748find that string, and take out the spaces.
1749
1750Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1751
1752* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1753
1754This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1755many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1756swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1757can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1758command `swap -l'.
1759
1760You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1761line like this:
1762
1763/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1764
1765where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1766by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1767that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1768new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1769information.
1770
1771The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1772swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1773on the network that can log on to the host.
1774
1775If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1776the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1777some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1778icons.
1779
1780You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1781FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1782("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1783ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1784
1785* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1786character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1787
1788One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1789away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1790XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1791
1792* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1793
1794This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1795on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1796version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1797it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1798
1799* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1800(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1801
1802Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1803
1804* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1805with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1806
1807On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1808`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1809Definitions" to make them defined.
1810
1811* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1812 ld: Undefined symbol
1813 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1814 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1815
1816The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1817or link libXmu statically.
1818
1819* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1820 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1821 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1822
1823This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1824these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1825you build Emacs:
1826
1827 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1828 chmod 664 libIM.a
1829 ranlib libIM.a
1830
1831Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1832Makefile).
1833
1834* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1835
1836A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1837the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1838
1839We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1840
1841* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1842Windows.
1843
1844A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1845Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1846problem.
1847
1848* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1849
1850Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1851and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1852know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1853memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1854However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1855
1856You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1857arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1858information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1859is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1860
1861Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1862configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1863removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1864and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1865the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1866
1867* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1868
1869twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1870You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1871
1872 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1873
1874* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1875
1876This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1877the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1878Emacs's configure script.
1879
1880* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1881
1882This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1883problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1884configure script.
1885
1886* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1887
1888If you get errors such as
1889
1890 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1891 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1892 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1893
1894This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1895to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1896script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1897make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1898ones available when you build Emacs.
1899
1900* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1901other non-English HP keyboards too).
1902
1903This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1904shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1905configures the X server.
1906
1907 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1908 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1909 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1910 EOF
1911
1912 xmodmap - << EOF
1913 clear mod1
1914 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1915 add mod1 = Meta_L
1916 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1917 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1918 EOF
1919
1920* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1921
1922Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1923command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1924Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1925manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1926shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1927
1928 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1929
1930* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1931
1932There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1933that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1934
1935* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1936
1937The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1938be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1939to allocate ptys reliably.
1940
1941* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1942
1943The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1944Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1945compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1946workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1947syms.h.
1948
1949* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1950
1951People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1952startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1953
1954This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1955Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1956improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1957networked and non-networked machines.
1958
1959Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1960
1961** Networked Case
1962
1963First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1964exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1965(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1966
1967 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1968
1969Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1970lines:
1971
1972 order hosts, bind
1973 multi on
1974
1975Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1976indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1977database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1978dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1979
1980** Non-Networked Case
1981
1982The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1983However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1984simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1985`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1986file is not necessary with this approach.
1987
1988* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1989forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1990
1991casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1992after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1993
1994 #if ThreadedX
1995 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1996 #endif
1997
1998to:
1999
2000 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
2001 #if ThreadedX
2002 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2003 #endif
2004 #endif
2005
2006Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
2007(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
2008OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
2009Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
2010definition for your type of machine and system.
2011
2012Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
2013the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
2014Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
2015
2016For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
2017101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
2018to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
2019patch.
2020
2021However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
2022he changed
2023 #define ThreadedX YES
2024to
2025 #define ThreadedX NO
2026in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
2027`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
2028typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
2029
2030* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
2031 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
2032
2033This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
2034with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
2035another escape character in kermit. One user did
2036
2037 set escape-character 17
2038
2039in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
2040
2041* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
2042
2043This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
2044
2045 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
2046
2047That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
2048do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
2049explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
2050the resource prevents the problem.
2051
2052* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
2053
2054We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2055one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
2056
2057100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2058100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2059100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2060100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2061100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2062
2063We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2064which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2065
2066* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
2067
2068This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
2069installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2070specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2071corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2072the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2073Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2074files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2075original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2076not to work.
2077
2078The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2079when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2080is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2081same directory where system header files are kept.
2082
2083* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2084
2085This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2086are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2087does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2088later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2089described in the Solaris FAQ
2090<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2091to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2092
2093* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2094
2095This shell command should fix it:
2096
2097 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2098
2099* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2100
2101On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2102with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2103version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2104C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2105GCC.
2106
2107* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2108
2109This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2110for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2111/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2112
2113* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2114
2115On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2116works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2117bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2118the Files menu).
2119
2120This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2121due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2122knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2123workaround can be found.
2124
2125* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2126
2127The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2128that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2129fonts, so it does not work.
2130
2131This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2132the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2133emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2134that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2135resources affect Emacs also:
2136
2137 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2138 *Background: scoBackground
2139 *Foreground: scoForeground
2140
2141The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2142Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2143
2144 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2145 Emacs*Background: white
2146 Emacs*Foreground: black
2147
2148(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2149suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2150starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2151environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2152as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2153/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2154but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2155Open Desktop display.
2156
2157These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2158machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2159
2160* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2161
2162This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2163The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2164
2165* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2166
2167This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2168doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2169because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2170libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2171those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2172install them and rebuild Emacs.
2173
2174* Loading fonts is very slow.
2175
2176You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2177Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2178directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2179"fonts.scale".
2180
2181If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2182font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2183
2184With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2185directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2186Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2187
2188* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2189
2190Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2191ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2192lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2193treated as control characters.
2194
2195You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2196releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2197
2198* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2199
2200Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2201versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2202cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2203This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2204processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2205
2206Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2207the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2208
2209The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2210
2211* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2212
2213This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2214C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2215
2216* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2217 segmentation fault and core dump.
2218
2219This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2220added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2221
2222 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2223
2224If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2225untar it :-).
2226
2227* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2228
2229To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2230
2231 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2232
2233and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2234
2235The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2236cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2237
2238* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2239
2240There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2241the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2242workaround/fix is:
2243
2244 cd /lib
2245 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2246 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2247
2248* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2249
2250If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2251with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2252the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2253libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2254toolkit.)
2255
2256If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2257lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2258X11R4, then use it in the link.
2259
2260* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2261
2262This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2263Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2264Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2265where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2266
2267So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2268
2269* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2270
2271This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2272smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2273on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2274problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2275
2276 if ($?EMACS) then
2277 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2278 unset edit
2279 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2280 endif
2281 endif
2282
2283* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2284parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2285
2286This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2287 emacs*Cursor: black
2288(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2289that isn't a color.)
2290
2291The fix is to correct your X resources.
2292
2293* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2294
2295If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2296_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2297-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2298
2299This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2300extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2301
2302* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2303
2304This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2305to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2306Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2307
2308* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2309
2310This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2311had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2312
2313* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2314
2315If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2316resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2317renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2318font.
2319
2320One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2321your font path, like this:
2322
2323 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2324
2325* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2326
2327An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2328
2329 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2330
2331This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2332individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2333want, rewrite the resource.
2334
2335To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2336-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2337the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2338
2339* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2340
2341On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2342unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2343toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2344libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2345unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2346and Solaris in version 19.29.
2347
2348* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2349
2350This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2351commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2352Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2353hand.
2354
2355* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2356
2357This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2358The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2359such as bash.
2360
2361* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2362
2363A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2364exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2365applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2366communicating through pipes.
2367
2368* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2369
2370Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2371sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2372delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2373program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2374means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2375command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2376obtain the destination address.
2377
2378There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2379In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2380non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
23812.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
23824.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2383have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2384of this writing, these official versions are available:
2385
2386 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2387 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2388 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2389 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2390 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2391
2392 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2393 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2394
2395* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2396
2397 Could not load program emacs
2398 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2399 Error was: Exec format error
2400
2401or this one:
2402
2403 Could not load program .emacs
2404 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2405 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2406 Error was: Exec format error
2407
2408These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2409compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2410
2411* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2412
2413 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2414 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2415
2416This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2417libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2418X11Dev... with smit.
2419
2420* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2421
2422This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2423Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2424character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2425to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2426
2427For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2428
2429 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2430
2431If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2432Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2433xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2434
2435* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2436
2437You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2438though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2439or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2440
2441* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2442
2443These control the actions of Emacs.
2444~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2445EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2446"load" will search.
2447
2448If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2449of them, then try again.
2450
2451* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2452
2453Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2454mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2455the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2456
2457Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2458you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2459operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2460configure script) that reads:
2461#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2462This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2463the kernel bug.
2464
2465* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2466directly with an X server.
2467
2468If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2469does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2470whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2471followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2472it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2473have made the key binding correctly.
2474
2475If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2476be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2477server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2478default.
2479
2480If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2481
2482 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2483 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2484
2485If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2486commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2487are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2488modifier bit not otherwise used.
2489
2490If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2491keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2492some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2493commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2494
2495Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2496into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2497
2498* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2499
2500On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2501file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2502does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2503value is just ten seconds.
2504
2505If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2506
2507* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2508
2509On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2510in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2511expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2512in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2513
2514The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2515anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2516
2517I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2518going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2519Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2520in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2521
2522* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2523
2524Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2525the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2526sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2527
2528* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2529
2530Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2531
2532* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2533the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2534* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2535* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2536
2537This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2538libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2539shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2540similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2541
2542The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2543the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2544
2545The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2546installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2547
2548On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2549
2550If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2551then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2552do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2553or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2554that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2555be careful not to lose the others.
2556
2557Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2558
2559#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2560
2561Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2562the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2563again to say this:
2564
2565#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2566
2567* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2568
2569 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2570
2571The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2572
2573The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2574
2575* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2576
2577This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2578with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2579corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2580
2581* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2582
2583People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2584Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2585
2586* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2587
2588christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2589
2590The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2591execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2592tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2593but tty is giving it back 3.
2594
2595The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2596word:
2597
2598if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2599
2600should be changed to:
2601
2602if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2603
2604Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2605and into .login.
2606
2607* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2608
2609Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2610
2611* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2612* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2613
2614One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2615your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2616the environment.
2617
2618* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2619
2620If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2621`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2622that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2623with a floating point option other than the default.
2624
2625It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2626crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2627However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2628floating point option: -fsoft.
2629
2630* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2631
2632The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2633arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2634tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2635
2636I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2637whether this problem is present on a given system.
2638
2639* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2640 as a concentrator.
2641
2642This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
26437 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2644
2645* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2646
2647This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2648version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2649
2650* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2651 terminal type.
2652
2653The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2654environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2655provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2656emulates.
2657
2658Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2659in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2660it only if it is undefined.
2661
2662 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2663
2664Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2665happen in a non-login shell.
2666
2667* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2668
2669People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2670not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2671the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2672the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2673
2674You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2675However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2676you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2677
2678The easy way to do this is to put
2679
2680 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2681
2682in your site-init.el file.
2683
2684* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2685
2686On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2687may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2688is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2689As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2690
2691* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2692
2693You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2694
2695 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2696
2697This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2698Here is how to make more of them.
2699
2700 % cd /dev
2701 % ls pty*
2702 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2703 % /etc/crpty 8
2704 # creates eight new pty's
2705
2706* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2707
2708This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2709Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2710
2711It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2712space available on the machine.
2713
2714On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2715subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2716for large blocks (many pages).
2717
2718* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2719* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2720* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2721* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2722
2723This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2724fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2725binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2726
2727In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2728It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2729a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2730itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2731when unpacking the shell archive.
2732
2733I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2734what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2735file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2736
2737If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2738nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2739
2740 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2741 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2742 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2743 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2744 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2745 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2746 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2747 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2748 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2749 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2750 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2751 and remake temacs.
2752 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2753
2754* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2755
2756This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2757files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2758space than was allocated.
2759
2760This could be caused by
2761 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2762 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2763 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2764 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2765 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2766 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2767 deleting that file.
2768 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2769 (not from the directory you expected).
2770 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2771 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2772 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2773 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2774 the space required.
2775
2776If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2777of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2778
2779But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2780of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2781problem.
2782
2783* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2784
2785You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2786Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2787will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2788and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2789
2790Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2791than the corresponding .el file.
2792
2793* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2794
2795Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2796
27971) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2798as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2799it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2800value in the man page for a.out (5).
2801
28022) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2803initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2804of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2805not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2806may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2807
2808* Compilation errors on VMS.
2809
2810You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2811variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2812This is not an error. Ignore it.
2813
2814VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2815were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2816
2817There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2818in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2819 char c = -1, d = 1;
2820 int i;
2821
2822 i = d ? c : d;
2823The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2824conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2825constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2826
2827* rmail gets error getting new mail
2828
2829rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2830called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2831the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2832
2833There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2834the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2835`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2836this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2837the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2838IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2839SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2840
2841If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2842prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2843you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2844`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2845
2846 chgrp mail movemail
2847 chmod 2755 movemail
2848
2849If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2850prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2851you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2852`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2853make install.
2854
2855 chgrp mail movemail
2856 chmod 2755 movemail
2857
2858Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2859installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2860installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2861/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2862mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2863directory copy is ineffective.
2864
2865* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2866
2867This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2868used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2869away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2870streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2871user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2872properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2873input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2874easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2875
2876There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2877
2878 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2879 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2880 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2881
2882First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2883they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2884"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2885escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2886and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2887control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2888
2889Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2890needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2891by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2892rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2893your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2894it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2895the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2896problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2897to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2898
2899For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2900giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2901codes. You might as well try it.
2902
2903If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2904through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2905computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2906much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2907control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2908you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2909replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2910measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2911
2912You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2913handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2914enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2915now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2916enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2917control handling.)
2918
2919If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2920is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2921other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2922and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2923other control characters are already used by emacs.
2924
2925IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2926Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2927order to continue.
2928
2929If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2930certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2931`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2932automatically. Here is an example:
2933
2934(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2935
2936If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2937and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2938manually.
2939
2940I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2941assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2942control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2943merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2944widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2945use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2946will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2947of inferior systems.
2948
2949* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2950
2951For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2952control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2953terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2954that wants to use flow control.
2955
2956You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2957If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2958flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2959
2960If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2961into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2962shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2963
2964* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2965
2966Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2967control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2968On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2969control on the local system.
2970
2971One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2972(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2973stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2974"stty start u stop u" will do this.
2975
2976Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2977around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2978issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2979
2980If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2981M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2982if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2983following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2984
2985(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2986
2987See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2988info.
2989
2990* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2991
2992This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2993terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2994the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2995
2996The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2997Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2998(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2999terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
3000what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
3001and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
3002There are several possibilities:
3003
30041) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
3005
3006In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
3007need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
3008
30092) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
3010 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
3011 by termcap.
3012
3013This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
3014Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
3015and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
3016classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
3017Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
3018tested on many kinds of terminals.
3019
30203) The termcap entry is wrong.
3021
3022See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
3023that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
3024for certain terminals.
3025
30264) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
3027 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
3028
3029This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
3030in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
3031
3032* Output from Control-V is slow.
3033
3034On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
3035Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
3036to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
3037before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
3038the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
3039it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
3040
3041If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
3042that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
3043specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
3044concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
3045send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
3046fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
3047time as the operations really take.
3048
3049Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
3050at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
3051terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
3052operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
3053flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
3054an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
3055Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
3056cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
3057not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
3058is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
3059
3060Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
3061multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
3062termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
3063fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
3064each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
3065to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
3066`cm' string.
3067
3068You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
3069has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3070take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3071
3072A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3073of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3074
3075* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3076
3077The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3078
3079 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3080 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3081
3082This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3083
3084* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3085
3086Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3087after a day or two.
3088
3089The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3090the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3091character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3092of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3093overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3094to it.
3095
3096For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3097and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3098other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3099but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3100that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3101important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3102
3103If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3104you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3105 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3106You can probably access help-command via f1.
3107
3108* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3109It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3110but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3111causes it.
3112
3113 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3114 call in the RFS server.
3115
3116 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3117 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3118 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3119 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3120
3121 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3122
3123 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3124 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3125 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3126 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3127 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3128 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3129 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3130
3131 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3132
3133 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3134 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3135 retrieving revision 1.2
3136 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3137 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3138 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3139 ***************
3140 *** 163,169 ****
3141 /*
3142 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3143 */
3144 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3145 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3146 else
3147 {
3148 --- 166,172 ----
3149 /*
3150 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3151 */
3152 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3153 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3154 else
3155 {
3156
3157* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3158
3159You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3160
3161 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3162 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3163
3164These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3165Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3166may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3167on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3168in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3169can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3170that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3171
3172As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3173you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3174can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3175should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3176array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3177 Lisp_Object *args;
3178 ...
3179 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3180putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3181 Lisp_Object *args;
3182 Lisp_Object tem;
3183 ...
3184 tem = args[i];
3185 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3186causes the problem to go away.
3187The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3188so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3189
3190* 68000 C compiler problems
3191
3192Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3193These are some that have been observed.
3194
3195** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3196This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3197if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3198
3199** "cannot reclaim" error.
3200
3201This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3202line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3203simpler expressions.
3204
3205** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3206
3207If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3208Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3209
3210struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3211
3212lose (arg)
3213 struct foo arg;
3214{
3215 test ((int *) arg.y);
3216}
3217
3218If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3219In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3220((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3221
3222This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3223of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3224
3225* C compilers lose on returning unions
3226
3227I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3228Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3229defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3230
3231This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3232of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3233