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[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* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
254
255The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
256emulation for which it is set up.
257
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258Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
259Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
260On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
261--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
262successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
263lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
264menu placement.
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265
266On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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267locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
268what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
269developers.
339b95d5 270
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271* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
272
273Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
274and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
275
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276Help text that is displayed in a tooltip on other window systems, on
277Windows is printed in the echo area, since tooltips are not yet
e071f64e 278available. Help text for pop-up menu items is not displayed at all.
f936978f 279
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280There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
281mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
282frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
283after moving back into it.
b87207a0 284
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285Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
286not as severely as in 21.1.
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287
288Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
289characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
290
291An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
292Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
293
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294Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
295These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
296the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
297characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
298work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
299you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
300the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
301ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
302appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
303yet.)
304
305Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
306applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
307is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
308but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
309means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
310Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
311Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
312set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
313
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314* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
315
316This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
317libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
318install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
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319where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
320probably isn't limited to that system.
c8d9b4ee 321
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322You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
323and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
324which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
325which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
326generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
c8d9b4ee 327
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328(If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
329libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
c8d9b4ee 330
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331* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
332
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333This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
334(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
335(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
336configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
337files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
338left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
339itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
340Emacs excutable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 341
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342In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
343machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
344(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
345This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
346
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347If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
348(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
349you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
350force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
351problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
352blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
353`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
354options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
355`/etc/auto.home'.
356
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357Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
358a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
359waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
360to work around the problem.
d9810886 361
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362Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
363onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
364you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
365`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
366
367 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
368
369The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
370
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371* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
372
373This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
374via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
375binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
376
377 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
378
379We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
380build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
381
9ed04369 382* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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383
384Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
385other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
386that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
387size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
388when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
389fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
390
391To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
392
393 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
394
395If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
396problem.
397
398The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
399`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
400`xset fp rehash'.
401
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402* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
403src/s/hpux10.h.
404
405* Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
406libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
407
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408* Font Lock displays portions of the bufefr in incorrect faces.
409
410By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
411`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
412any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
413vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
414parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
415in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
416patological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
417introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
418through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
419to the end of a very large buffer.
420
421If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
422makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
423fontification by setting the variable
424`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
425be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
426
427Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
428in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
429
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430* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
431
432Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
433MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
434port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
435keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
436of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
437
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438* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
439
440If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
441due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
442and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
443port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
444are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
445confuses ange-ftp.
446
447The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
448(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
449Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' directory. To
450force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the variable
451`ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the client's
452executable. For example:
453
454 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
455
456If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
457this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
458
459 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
460
461
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462* The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
463with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
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464fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
465work.
466
467Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
468If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
469CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
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470
471diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
472--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
473+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
474@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
475 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
476 (error nil))))
477 (t
478- (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
479+ ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
480+ (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
481 (condition-case ()
482 (progn
483 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
484diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
485--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
486+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
487@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
488+;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
489+;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
490+
491+(require 'w3-e19)
492+(provide 'w3-e21)
493
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494* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
495are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
496so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
497Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
498
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499* The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
500`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
49e37720 501longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.2 fix that.
e1f9a6b3 502
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503--- psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:23:31 1.1
504+++ psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:24:22
505@@ -264,4 +264,4 @@
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506 ; inhibit-read-only
507- (before-change-function nil)
508- (after-change-function nil))
509+ (before-change-functions nil)
510+ (after-change-functions nil))
511 (setq selective-display t)
49e37720 512@@ -1544,3 +1544,3 @@
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513 (buffer-read-only nil)
514- (before-change-function nil)
515+ (before-change-functions nil)
516 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
49e37720 517@@ -1596,3 +1596,3 @@
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518 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
519- (let (before-change-function
520+ (let (before-change-functions
521 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
49e37720 522@@ -1613,3 +1613,3 @@
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523 (re-found nil)
524- before-change-function)
525+ before-change-functions)
526 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
49e37720 527@@ -1646,3 +1646,3 @@
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528 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
529- (let ((before-change-function nil))
530+ (let ((before-change-functions nil))
531 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
2f9c7108 532Index: psgml-other.el
49e37720
DL
533--- psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:23:42 1.1
534+++ psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:30:05
e1f9a6b3
DL
535@@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
536 (require 'easymenu)
537+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
538
539@@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
540 (let ((submenu
541- (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
542- sgml-max-menu-size))))
543+;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
544+;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
545+ (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
546+ (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
547+ sgml-max-menu-size))
548+ new) nil)
549+ new)))
550 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
49e37720 551@@ -113,9 +119,10 @@
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552 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
553- (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
554- (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
555 (after-change-functions nil)
556- (before-change-functions nil))
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557+ (before-change-functions nil)
558+ (modified (buffer-modified-p))
559+ (buffer-undo-list t)
560+ deactivate-mark)
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561 (put-text-property start end 'face face)
562- (when (< start end)
563- (put-text-property (1- end) end 'rear-nonsticky '(face)))))
e1f9a6b3 564+ (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
49e37720 565+ (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
e1f9a6b3 566 (t
2f9c7108 567Index: psgml-parse.el
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568--- psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:23:57 1.1
569+++ psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:29:56
e1f9a6b3
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570@@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
571
572+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
573+
574 \f
49e37720 575@@ -2493,8 +2495,8 @@
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576 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
577- (when after-change-function ;***
578- (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
579+ (when after-change-functions ;***
580+ (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
581 (current-buffer)
582- after-change-function)
583- (setq before-change-function nil
584- after-change-function nil))
585+ after-change-functions)
586+ (setq before-change-functions nil
587+ after-change-functions nil))
588 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
49e37720 589@@ -2878,6 +2880,5 @@
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590 "Set initial state of parsing"
591- (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
592- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
593- (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
594- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
595+ (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
596+ (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
597+ '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
598 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
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599@@ -3925,7 +3926,7 @@
600 (sgml-need-dtd)
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601- (unless before-change-function
602- (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
603+ (unless before-change-functions
604+ (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
605 (current-buffer))
606- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
49e37720 607- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change))
e1f9a6b3 608+ (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
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609+ (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change)))
610 (sgml-with-parser-syntax-ro
e1f9a6b3 611
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612* Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
613
614As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
615characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
616etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
617different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
618which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
619encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
620text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
621into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
622buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
623
624To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
625
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626* Problems when using Emacs with UTF-8 locales
627
628Some systems, including recent versions of GNU/Linux, have terminals
629or X11 subsystems that can be configured to provide Unicode/UTF-8
630input and display. Normally, such a system sets environment variables
631such as LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL to a string which ends with a
632`.UTF-8'. For example, a system like this in a French locale might
633use `fr_FR.UTF-8' as the value of LANG.
634
635Since Unicode support in Emacs, as of v21.1, is not yet complete (see
636the previous entry in this file), UTF-8 support is not enabled by
637default, even in UTF-8 locales. Thus, some Emacs features, such as
638non-ASCII keyboard input, might appear to be broken in these locales.
639To solve these problems, you need to turn on some options in your
640`.emacs' file. Specifically, the following customizations should make
641Emacs work correctly with UTF-8 input and text:
642
643 (setq locale-coding-system 'utf-8)
644 (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
645 (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
646 (set-selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
647 (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
648
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649* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
650
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651This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
652slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
653e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
654Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
655correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 656
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EZ
657* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
658
659The error message might be something like this:
660
661 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
662
663This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
664built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
665for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
666corrects that.
667
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GM
668* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
669from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
670shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
671These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
672library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
673
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674Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
675process invokes Emacs several times.
676
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GM
677On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
678environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
679can be found.
680
681Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
682Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
683specified run-time search path in the executable.
684
685Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
686
0c6456ad 687* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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688C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
689compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
690release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
691another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
692and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 693
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694* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
695
696The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
697following message:
698
699 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
700
701To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
702INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
703functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
704
705 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
706 {
707 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
708 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
709
710Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
711with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
712
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713* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
714
715A typical error message might be something like
716
717 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
718
719This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
720Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
721are:
722
723 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
724
725 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
726 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
727 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
728
729One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
730fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
731the problematic line(s) and correct them.
732
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733* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
734
735The typical error message might be like this:
736
737 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
738
739This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
740tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
741files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
742Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
743when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
744required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
745its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
746
747Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
748file could fail to load if it is compressed.
749
750The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
751file.
752
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753* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
754
755If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
756representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
757ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.3
758with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other systems as well. To
759avoid this problem, switch to using the standard ftp client. On a
760Debian system, type
761
762 update-alternatives --config ftpd
763
764and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
765
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766* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
767
768The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
769work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
770was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
771work when an antivirus package is installed.
772
773The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
774mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
775or disable it entirely.
776
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JR
777* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
778
779This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
780when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
781cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
782ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
783
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784* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
785mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
786exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
787seen.
788
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789* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
790
791This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
792Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
793modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
794keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
795modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
796was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
797Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
798
799The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
800modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
801and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
802which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
803the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
804modifier:
805
806 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
807
808A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
809is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
810
811 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
812
813This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
814keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
815keys can serve as Meta.
816
817The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
818keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
819
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DL
820* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
821remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
822keyboard(5).
823
824Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
825% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
826% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
827
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DL
828* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
829
830Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
831It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
832system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
833the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
834
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835* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
836
837This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
838and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
839manager.
840
841This bug was reported to Sun as
842
843 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
844 Bug Reports: 4463537
845
2aa82bcf 846Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
0de9f9a8
EZ
847reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
848library xiiimp.so.
849
850Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
851the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
852can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
853
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854* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
855
856This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
857assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
858To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
859or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
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860Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
861
862* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
863
864Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
865
866 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
867 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
868 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
869 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
870 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
871 /******************************************************************
872
873 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
874 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
875 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
876 XLCd lcd;
877 {
878 - char* begin;
879 - char* end;
880 + char* begin = NULL;
881 + char* end = NULL;
882 char* ret;
883 int i = 0;
884 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
885 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
886 }
887 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
888 if (ret != NULL) {
889 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
890 + if (begin != NULL) {
891 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
892 + } else {
893 + ret[0] = '\0';
894 + }
895 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
896 }
897 return ret;
898
899
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900* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
901
902This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
903
904* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
905
906This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
907It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
908
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909* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
910
911This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
912combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
913definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
914might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
915purposes.
916
917We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
918you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
919
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920* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
921the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
922
923You can fix this by editing the file:
924
925 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
926
927Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
928
929 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
930
931that should read:
932
933 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
934
935Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
936
937* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
938 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
939
940This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
941Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
942
943* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
944
945Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
946problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
947documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
948
949* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
950
951These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
952particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
953configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
954configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
955change this.
956
957* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
958
959When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
960(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
961then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
962correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
963gives the appearance of "double spacing".
964
965To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
966feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
967
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968* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
969
970This problem manifests itself as an error message
971
972 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
973
974The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
975were built for an older system version,
976
977 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
978
979made the problem go away.
980
981* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
982
983This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
984as of 8 Dec 1998.
985
986The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
987
988* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
989the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
990next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
991
992* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
993
994This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
995a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
996likely to cause it.
997
998We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
999
1000* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1001
1002This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1003
1004* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1005
1006This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1007
1008* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1009Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1010`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1011'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1012
1013* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1014(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1015Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1016earlier versions.
1017
1018--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1019+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1020@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1021 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1022 (cond
1023 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1024- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1025+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1026 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1027 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1028 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1029
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1030* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1031
1032Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1033these problems.
1034
1035* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
a933dad1
DL
1036about a read-only tex output buffer.
1037
1038This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1039versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1040package.
1041
1042diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1043*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1044--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1045***************
1046*** 545,551 ****
1047 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1048 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1049 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1050! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1051 (set-buffer buffer)
1052 (if dir (cd dir))
1053 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1054- --- 545,552 ----
1055 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1056 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1057 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1058! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1059! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1060 (set-buffer buffer)
1061 (if dir (cd dir))
1062 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1063
1064* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1065in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1066
1067 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1068
1069This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1070003082 August 11, 1998.
1071
1072* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1073
1074The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1075 (standard-display-european t)
1076That should be changed to
1077 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1078
1079* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1080
1081You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1082supplies the `install-info' command.
1083
1084* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1085
1086To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1087rights, containing this text:
1088
1089--------------------------------
1090xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1091keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1092keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1093EOF
1094
1095xmodmap - << EOF
1096clear mod1
1097keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1098add mod1 = Meta_L
1099keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1100add mod2 = Mode_switch
1101EOF
1102--------------------------------
1103
17a37d87
EZ
1104* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1105
62c485d2
GM
1106This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1107requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1108of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1109which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1110while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1111
1112 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1113
62c485d2 1114A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1115
a933dad1
DL
1116* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1117in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1118drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1119
1120This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1121device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1122work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1123
1124* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1125
1126See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1127for character composition.
1128
1129* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1130
1131This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1132full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1133/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1134
1135127.0.0.1 localhost
1136129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1137
1138The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1139
1140* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1141
1142So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1143is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1144properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1145`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1146in Emacs.
1147
1148* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1149
3d00585e
EZ
1150This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1151characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1152characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1153support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1154
3d00585e
EZ
1155To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1156this at your shell's prompt:
1157
1158 ispell -vv
1159
1160and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1161"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1162does not.
1163
1164To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1165in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1166Then rebuild the speller.
1167
1168Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1169version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1170
1171Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1172in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1173Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1174it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1175spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
a933dad1
DL
1176
1177* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
11785.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1179
1180This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1181One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1182known to work.
1183
1184* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1185CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1186
1187This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1188
1189Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1190events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1191distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1192combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1193AltGr has been pressed.
1194
1195* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1196
1197The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1198screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1199display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1200to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1201
1202This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1203well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1204
1205There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1206running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1207un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1208selection".
1209
1210Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1211please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1212If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1213here.
1214
1215* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1216
1217The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1218Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1219(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1220You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1221You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1222look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1223are currently recommended for your host.
1224
1225On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1226105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1227105284-18 might fix it again.
1228
3156909f
PE
1229* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1230
1231This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1232the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1233support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1234If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
DL
1235
1236One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1237For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1238variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1239lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1240should do.
1241
3156909f
PE
1242pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1243if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1244libraries.
a933dad1
DL
1245
1246* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1247
1248You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1249either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1250calls for specifying this.
1251
1252If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1253mail-host-address to the value you want.
1254
1255* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1256
1257Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1258virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1259the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1260error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1261exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1262memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1263
1264You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1265But you have to be root to do it.
1266
1267According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1268
1269 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1270 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1271 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1272 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1273 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1274
1275(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1276These changes take effect when you reboot.
1277
1278* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1279
1280We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1281scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1282happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1283on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1284
1285Here's how to do this:
1286
1287 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1288
1289If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1290try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1291to normal, do
1292
1293 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1294
1295* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1296
1297Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1298supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1299many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1300
1301If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1302server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1303You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1304
1305The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1306display all the characters Emacs supports.
1307
4c635a29
DL
1308Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1309missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1310character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1311but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1312of this character to display a space.
1313
a933dad1
DL
1314* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1315
1316You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1317
1318* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1319
1320This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1321than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1322lines do not overlap.
1323
1324* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1325video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1326
1327This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1328your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1329check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1330
1331* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1332directories that have the +t bit.
1333
1334This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1335Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1336with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1337link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1338
1339If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1340file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1341
1342* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1343commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1344
1345You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1346
1347 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1348
1349* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1350appear on disk.
1351
1352This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1353remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1354implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1355detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1356calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1357where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1358
1359* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1360
1361If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1362will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1363in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1364did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1365character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1366must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1367
1368You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1369them to two different keys.
1370
1371* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1372
1373If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1374without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1375
1376* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1377
1378Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1379NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1380entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1381listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1382the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1383old POP protocol.
1384
1385* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1386
1387This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1388use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1389an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1390happens to exist on your X server).
1391
1392* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1393
1394This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1395prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1396to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1397
1398Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1399(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1400
1401* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1402
1403We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1404the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1405does not happen.
1406
1407* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1408
1409We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1410Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1411makes the problem stop:
1412
1413105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1414105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1415106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1416105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1417
1418Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1419suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1420
1421106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1422106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1423105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1424
1425* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1426
1427`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1428The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1429
1430The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1431"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1432with the user.
1433
1434On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1435pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1436communicate with the subprocess.
1437
1438On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1439relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1440redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1441stdin.
1442
1443A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1444
1445For Perl 4:
1446
1447 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1448 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1449 ***************
1450 *** 68,74 ****
1451 $rcfile=".perldb";
1452 }
1453 else {
1454 ! $console = "con";
1455 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1456 }
1457
1458 --- 68,74 ----
1459 $rcfile=".perldb";
1460 }
1461 else {
1462 ! $console = "";
1463 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1464 }
1465
1466
1467 For Perl 5:
1468 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1469 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1470 ***************
1471 *** 22,28 ****
1472 $rcfile=".perldb";
1473 }
1474 elsif (-e "con") {
1475 ! $console = "con";
1476 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1477 }
1478 else {
1479 --- 22,28 ----
1480 $rcfile=".perldb";
1481 }
1482 elsif (-e "con") {
1483 ! $console = "";
1484 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1485 }
1486 else {
1487
1488* Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1489
1490Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1491others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1492
1493When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1494hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1495by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1496finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1497instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1498can find out the process id.
1499
1500It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1501M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1502start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1503programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1504work.
1505
1506* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1507
1508There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1509
1510 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1511 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1512 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1513
1514To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1515subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1516them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1517incorrect library functions.
1518
f1e54ce1
EZ
1519* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1520
1521If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1522Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1523program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1524config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1525the front of your PATH environment variable.
1526
a933dad1
DL
1527* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1528like make-docfile.
1529
1530This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1531variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1532compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1533the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1534
1535* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1536run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a01325b8
EZ
1537
1538Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
a933dad1
DL
1539immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1540the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
a01325b8
EZ
1541and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1542
1543Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1544the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1545Lisp.
a933dad1
DL
1546
1547This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1548support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1549characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1550You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1551filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1552compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1553explains this issue in more detail.
1554
a01325b8
EZ
1555Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1556MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1557by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1558unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1559them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1560must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1561properly truncated.
1562
a933dad1
DL
1563* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1564
1565 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1566
1567This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1568on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1569value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1570works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1571support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1572undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1573[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1574`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1575your system works as before.
1576
1577* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1578
1579This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1580You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1581
1582* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1583
1584This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1585you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1586and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1587
1588* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1589
1590This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1591version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1592definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1593incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1594does not work with this version of ncurses.
1595
1596The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1597
1598* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1599
1600Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1601editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1602as GCC.
1603
1604* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1605on GNU/Linux systems.
1606
1607This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
16081.3.75.
1609
1610* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1611
1612There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1613caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1614problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1615is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1616
1617Using the old library version is a workaround.
1618
1619* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1620
1621This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1622version of Solaris that you are using.
1623
1624* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1625
1626Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1627102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1628Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1629by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1630However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1631
1632Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1633you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1634We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1635for certain.
1636
1637 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1638 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1639 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1640
1641(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1642with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1643
1644If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1645bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1646
1647Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1648Solaris 2.5.
1649
1650* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1651
1652If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1653of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1654called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1655
1656* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1657Emacs built with Motif.
1658
1659This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1660such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1661
1662* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1663
1664A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1665in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1666find that string, and take out the spaces.
1667
1668Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1669
1670* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1671
1672This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1673many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1674swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1675can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1676command `swap -l'.
1677
1678You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1679line like this:
1680
1681/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1682
1683where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1684by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1685that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1686new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1687information.
1688
1689The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1690swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1691on the network that can log on to the host.
1692
1693If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1694the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1695some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1696icons.
1697
1698You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1699FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1700("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1701ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1702
1703* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1704character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1705
1706One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1707away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1708XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1709
1710* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1711
1712This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1713on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1714version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1715it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1716
1717* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1718(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1719
1720Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1721
1722* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1723with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1724
1725On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1726`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1727Definitions" to make them defined.
1728
1729* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1730 ld: Undefined symbol
1731 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1732 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1733
1734The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1735or link libXmu statically.
1736
1737* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1738 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1739 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1740
1741This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1742these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1743you build Emacs:
1744
1745 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1746 chmod 664 libIM.a
1747 ranlib libIM.a
1748
1749Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1750Makefile).
1751
1752* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1753
1754A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1755the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1756
1757We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1758
1759* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1760Windows.
1761
1762A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1763Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1764problem.
1765
1766* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1767
1768Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1769and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1770know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1771memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1772However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1773
1774You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1775arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1776information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1777is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1778
1779Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1780configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1781removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1782and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1783the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1784
1785* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1786
1787twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1788You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1789
1790 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1791
1792* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1793
1794This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1795the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1796Emacs's configure script.
1797
1798* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1799
1800This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1801problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1802configure script.
1803
1804* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1805
1806If you get errors such as
1807
1808 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1809 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1810 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1811
1812This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1813to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1814script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1815make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1816ones available when you build Emacs.
1817
1818* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1819other non-English HP keyboards too).
1820
1821This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1822shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1823configures the X server.
1824
1825 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1826 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1827 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1828 EOF
1829
1830 xmodmap - << EOF
1831 clear mod1
1832 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1833 add mod1 = Meta_L
1834 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1835 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1836 EOF
1837
1838* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1839
1840Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1841command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1842Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1843manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1844shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1845
1846 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1847
1848* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1849
1850There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1851that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1852
1853* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1854
1855The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1856be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1857to allocate ptys reliably.
1858
1859* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1860
1861The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1862Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1863compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1864workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1865syms.h.
1866
1867* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1868
1869People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1870startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1871
1872This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1873Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1874improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1875networked and non-networked machines.
1876
1877Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1878
1879** Networked Case
1880
1881First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1882exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1883(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1884
1885 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1886
1887Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1888lines:
1889
1890 order hosts, bind
1891 multi on
1892
1893Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1894indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1895database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1896dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1897
1898** Non-Networked Case
1899
1900The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1901However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1902simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1903`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1904file is not necessary with this approach.
1905
1906* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1907forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1908
1909casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1910after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1911
1912 #if ThreadedX
1913 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1914 #endif
1915
1916to:
1917
1918 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1919 #if ThreadedX
1920 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1921 #endif
1922 #endif
1923
1924Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1925(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1926OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1927Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1928definition for your type of machine and system.
1929
1930Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1931the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1932Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1933
1934For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1935101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1936to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1937patch.
1938
1939However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1940he changed
1941 #define ThreadedX YES
1942to
1943 #define ThreadedX NO
1944in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1945`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1946typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1947
1948* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1949 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1950
1951This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1952with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1953another escape character in kermit. One user did
1954
1955 set escape-character 17
1956
1957in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1958
1959* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1960
1961This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1962
1963 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1964
1965That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1966do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1967explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1968the resource prevents the problem.
1969
1970* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1971
1972We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1973one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1974
1975100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1976100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1977100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1978100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1979100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1980
1981We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1982which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1983
1984* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1985
1986This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1987installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1988specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1989corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1990the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1991Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1992files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1993original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1994not to work.
1995
1996The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
1997when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
1998is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
1999same directory where system header files are kept.
2000
2001* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2002
2003This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2004are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2005does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2006later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2007described in the Solaris FAQ
2008<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2009to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2010
2011* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2012
2013This shell command should fix it:
2014
2015 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2016
2017* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2018
2019On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2020with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2021version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2022C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2023GCC.
2024
2025* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2026
2027This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2028for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2029/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2030
2031* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2032
2033On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2034works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2035bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2036the Files menu).
2037
2038This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2039due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2040knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2041workaround can be found.
2042
2043* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2044
2045The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2046that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2047fonts, so it does not work.
2048
2049This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2050the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2051emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2052that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2053resources affect Emacs also:
2054
2055 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2056 *Background: scoBackground
2057 *Foreground: scoForeground
2058
2059The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2060Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2061
2062 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2063 Emacs*Background: white
2064 Emacs*Foreground: black
2065
2066(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2067suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2068starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2069environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2070as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2071/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2072but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2073Open Desktop display.
2074
2075These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2076machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2077
2078* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2079
2080This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2081The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2082
2083* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2084
2085This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2086doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2087because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2088libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2089those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2090install them and rebuild Emacs.
2091
2092* Loading fonts is very slow.
2093
2094You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2095Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2096directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2097"fonts.scale".
2098
2099If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2100font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2101
2102With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2103directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2104Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2105
2106* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2107
2108Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2109ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2110lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2111treated as control characters.
2112
2113You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2114releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2115
2116* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2117
2118Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2119versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2120cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2121This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2122processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2123
2124Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2125the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2126
2127The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2128
2129* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2130
2131This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2132C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2133
2134* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2135 segmentation fault and core dump.
2136
2137This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2138added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2139
2140 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2141
2142If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2143untar it :-).
2144
2145* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2146
2147To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2148
2149 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2150
2151and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2152
2153The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2154cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2155
2156* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2157
2158There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2159the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2160workaround/fix is:
2161
2162 cd /lib
2163 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2164 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2165
2166* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2167
2168If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2169with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2170the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2171libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2172toolkit.)
2173
2174If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2175lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2176X11R4, then use it in the link.
2177
2178* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2179
2180This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2181Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2182Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2183where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2184
2185So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2186
2187* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2188
2189This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2190smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2191on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2192problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2193
2194 if ($?EMACS) then
2195 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2196 unset edit
2197 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2198 endif
2199 endif
2200
2201* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2202parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2203
2204This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2205 emacs*Cursor: black
2206(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2207that isn't a color.)
2208
2209The fix is to correct your X resources.
2210
2211* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2212
2213If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2214_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2215-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2216
2217This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2218extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2219
2220* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2221
2222This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2223to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2224Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2225
2226* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2227
2228This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2229had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2230
2231* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2232
2233If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2234resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2235renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2236font.
2237
2238One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2239your font path, like this:
2240
2241 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2242
2243* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2244
2245An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2246
2247 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2248
2249This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2250individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2251want, rewrite the resource.
2252
2253To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2254-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2255the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2256
2257* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2258
2259On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2260unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2261toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2262libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2263unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2264and Solaris in version 19.29.
2265
2266* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2267
2268This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2269commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2270Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2271hand.
2272
2273* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2274
2275This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2276The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2277such as bash.
2278
2279* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2280
2281A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2282exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2283applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2284communicating through pipes.
2285
2286* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2287
2288Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2289sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2290delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2291program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2292means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2293command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2294obtain the destination address.
2295
2296There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2297In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2298non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
22992.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
23004.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2301have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2302of this writing, these official versions are available:
2303
2304 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2305 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2306 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2307 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2308 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2309
2310 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2311 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2312
2313* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2314
2315 Could not load program emacs
2316 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2317 Error was: Exec format error
2318
2319or this one:
2320
2321 Could not load program .emacs
2322 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2323 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2324 Error was: Exec format error
2325
2326These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2327compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2328
2329* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2330
2331 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2332 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2333
2334This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2335libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2336X11Dev... with smit.
2337
2338* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2339
2340This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2341Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2342character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2343to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2344
2345For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2346
2347 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2348
2349If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2350Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2351xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2352
2353* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2354
2355You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2356though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2357or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2358
2359* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2360
2361These control the actions of Emacs.
2362~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2363EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2364"load" will search.
2365
2366If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2367of them, then try again.
2368
2369* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2370
2371Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2372mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2373the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2374
2375Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2376you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2377operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2378configure script) that reads:
2379#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2380This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2381the kernel bug.
2382
2383* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2384directly with an X server.
2385
2386If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2387does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2388whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2389followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2390it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2391have made the key binding correctly.
2392
2393If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2394be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2395server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2396default.
2397
2398If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2399
2400 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2401 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2402
2403If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2404commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2405are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2406modifier bit not otherwise used.
2407
2408If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2409keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2410some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2411commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2412
2413Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2414into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2415
2416* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2417
2418On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2419file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2420does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2421value is just ten seconds.
2422
2423If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2424
2425* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2426
2427On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2428in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2429expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2430in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2431
2432The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2433anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2434
2435I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2436going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2437Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2438in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2439
2440* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2441
2442Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2443the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2444sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2445
2446* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2447
2448Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2449
2450* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2451the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2452* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2453* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2454
2455This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2456libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2457shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2458similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2459
2460The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2461the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2462
2463The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2464installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2465
2466On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2467
2468If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2469then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2470do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2471or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2472that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2473be careful not to lose the others.
2474
2475Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2476
2477#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2478
2479Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2480the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2481again to say this:
2482
2483#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2484
2485* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2486
2487 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2488
2489The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2490
2491The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2492
2493* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2494
2495This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2496with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2497corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2498
2499* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2500
2501People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2502Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2503
2504* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2505
2506christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2507
2508The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2509execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2510tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2511but tty is giving it back 3.
2512
2513The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2514word:
2515
2516if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2517
2518should be changed to:
2519
2520if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2521
2522Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2523and into .login.
2524
2525* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2526
2527Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2528
2529* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2530* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2531
2532One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2533your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2534the environment.
2535
2536* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2537
2538If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2539`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2540that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2541with a floating point option other than the default.
2542
2543It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2544crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2545However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2546floating point option: -fsoft.
2547
2548* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2549
2550The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2551arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2552tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2553
2554I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2555whether this problem is present on a given system.
2556
2557* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2558 as a concentrator.
2559
2560This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
25617 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2562
2563* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2564
2565This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2566version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2567
2568* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2569 terminal type.
2570
2571The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2572environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2573provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2574emulates.
2575
2576Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2577in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2578it only if it is undefined.
2579
2580 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2581
2582Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2583happen in a non-login shell.
2584
2585* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2586
2587People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2588not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2589the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2590the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2591
2592You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2593However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2594you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2595
2596The easy way to do this is to put
2597
2598 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2599
2600in your site-init.el file.
2601
2602* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2603
2604On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2605may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2606is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2607As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2608
2609* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2610
2611You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2612
2613 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2614
2615This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2616Here is how to make more of them.
2617
2618 % cd /dev
2619 % ls pty*
2620 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2621 % /etc/crpty 8
2622 # creates eight new pty's
2623
2624* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2625
2626This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2627Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2628
2629It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2630space available on the machine.
2631
2632On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2633subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2634for large blocks (many pages).
2635
2636* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2637* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2638* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2639* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2640
2641This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2642fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2643binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2644
2645In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2646It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2647a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2648itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2649when unpacking the shell archive.
2650
2651I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2652what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2653file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2654
2655If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2656nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2657
2658 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2659 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2660 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2661 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2662 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2663 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2664 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2665 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2666 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2667 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2668 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2669 and remake temacs.
2670 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2671
2672* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2673
2674This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2675files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2676space than was allocated.
2677
2678This could be caused by
2679 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2680 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2681 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2682 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2683 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2684 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2685 deleting that file.
2686 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2687 (not from the directory you expected).
2688 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2689 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2690 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2691 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2692 the space required.
2693
2694If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2695of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2696
2697But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2698of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2699problem.
2700
2701* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2702
2703You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2704Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2705will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2706and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2707
2708Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2709than the corresponding .el file.
2710
2711* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2712
2713Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2714
27151) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2716as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2717it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2718value in the man page for a.out (5).
2719
27202) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2721initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2722of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2723not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2724may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2725
2726* Compilation errors on VMS.
2727
2728You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2729variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2730This is not an error. Ignore it.
2731
2732VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2733were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2734
2735There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2736in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2737 char c = -1, d = 1;
2738 int i;
2739
2740 i = d ? c : d;
2741The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2742conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2743constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2744
2745* rmail gets error getting new mail
2746
2747rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2748called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2749the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2750
2751There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2752the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2753`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2754this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2755the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2756IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2757SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2758
2759If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2760prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2761you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2762`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2763
2764 chgrp mail movemail
2765 chmod 2755 movemail
2766
2767If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2768prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2769you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2770`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2771make install.
2772
2773 chgrp mail movemail
2774 chmod 2755 movemail
2775
2776Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2777installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2778installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2779/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2780mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2781directory copy is ineffective.
2782
2783* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2784
2785This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2786used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2787away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2788streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2789user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2790properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2791input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2792easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2793
2794There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2795
2796 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2797 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2798 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2799
2800First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2801they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2802"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2803escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2804and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2805control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2806
2807Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2808needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2809by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2810rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2811your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2812it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2813the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2814problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2815to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2816
2817For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2818giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2819codes. You might as well try it.
2820
2821If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2822through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2823computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2824much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2825control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2826you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2827replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2828measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2829
2830You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2831handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2832enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2833now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2834enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2835control handling.)
2836
2837If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2838is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2839other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2840and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2841other control characters are already used by emacs.
2842
2843IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2844Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2845order to continue.
2846
2847If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2848certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2849`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2850automatically. Here is an example:
2851
2852(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2853
2854If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2855and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2856manually.
2857
2858I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2859assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2860control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2861merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2862widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2863use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2864will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2865of inferior systems.
2866
2867* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2868
2869For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2870control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2871terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2872that wants to use flow control.
2873
2874You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2875If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2876flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2877
2878If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2879into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2880shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2881
2882* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2883
2884Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2885control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2886On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2887control on the local system.
2888
2889One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2890(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2891stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2892"stty start u stop u" will do this.
2893
2894Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2895around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2896issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2897
2898If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2899M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2900if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2901following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2902
2903(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2904
2905See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2906info.
2907
2908* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2909
2910This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2911terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2912the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2913
2914The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2915Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2916(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2917terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2918what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2919and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2920There are several possibilities:
2921
29221) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2923
2924In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2925need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2926
29272) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2928 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2929 by termcap.
2930
2931This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2932Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2933and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2934classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2935Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2936tested on many kinds of terminals.
2937
29383) The termcap entry is wrong.
2939
2940See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2941that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2942for certain terminals.
2943
29444) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2945 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2946
2947This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2948in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2949
2950* Output from Control-V is slow.
2951
2952On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2953Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2954to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2955before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2956the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2957it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2958
2959If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2960that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2961specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2962concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2963send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2964fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2965time as the operations really take.
2966
2967Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2968at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2969terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2970operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2971flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2972an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2973Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2974cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2975not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2976is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2977
2978Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2979multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2980termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2981fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2982each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2983to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2984`cm' string.
2985
2986You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2987has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2988take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2989
2990A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2991of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2992
2993* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2994
2995The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2996
2997 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2998 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2999
3000This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3001
3002* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3003
3004Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3005after a day or two.
3006
3007The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3008the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3009character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3010of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3011overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3012to it.
3013
3014For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3015and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3016other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3017but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3018that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3019important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3020
3021If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3022you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3023 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3024You can probably access help-command via f1.
3025
3026* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3027It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3028but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3029causes it.
3030
3031 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3032 call in the RFS server.
3033
3034 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3035 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3036 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3037 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3038
3039 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3040
3041 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3042 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3043 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3044 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3045 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3046 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3047 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3048
3049 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3050
3051 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3052 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3053 retrieving revision 1.2
3054 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3055 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3056 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3057 ***************
3058 *** 163,169 ****
3059 /*
3060 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3061 */
3062 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3063 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3064 else
3065 {
3066 --- 166,172 ----
3067 /*
3068 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3069 */
3070 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3071 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3072 else
3073 {
3074
3075* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3076
3077You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3078
3079 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3080 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3081
3082These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3083Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3084may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3085on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3086in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3087can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3088that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3089
3090As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3091you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3092can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3093should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3094array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3095 Lisp_Object *args;
3096 ...
3097 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3098putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3099 Lisp_Object *args;
3100 Lisp_Object tem;
3101 ...
3102 tem = args[i];
3103 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3104causes the problem to go away.
3105The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3106so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3107
3108* 68000 C compiler problems
3109
3110Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3111These are some that have been observed.
3112
3113** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3114This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3115if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3116
3117** "cannot reclaim" error.
3118
3119This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3120line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3121simpler expressions.
3122
3123** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3124
3125If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3126Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3127
3128struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3129
3130lose (arg)
3131 struct foo arg;
3132{
3133 test ((int *) arg.y);
3134}
3135
3136If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3137In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3138((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3139
3140This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3141of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3142
3143* C compilers lose on returning unions
3144
3145I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3146Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3147defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3148
3149This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3150of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3151