(query-replace, query-replace-regexp): Doc fixes.
[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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5* Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
6
7XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
8minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding is meant to be a
9reasonable indication of the repertoire). Emacs may choose one of
10these to display characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then
11typically won't be able to find the glyphs to display many characters.
12(Check with C-u C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset
13which sets the font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use
14GNU unifont, include in the fontset spec:
15
16mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
17mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
18mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
19
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20* Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
21
22When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
23graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
24and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
25file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
26
4af77d9f 27The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
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28for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
29
30Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
31but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
32the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
33
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34* Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X) running on Solaris 7 or 8.
35
36This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
37Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
38
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39* Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
40
41Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
42library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
43following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
44though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
45distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
46
47--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
48+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
49@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
50
51 (mapcar
52 (lambda (x)
53- (mapcar
54- (lambda (y)
55- (mucs-define-coding-system
56- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
57- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
58- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
59- (cdr x)))
60+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
61+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
62+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
63+ ;; system definitions.
64+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
65+ (mucs-define-coding-system
66+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
67+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
68+ (mapcar
69+ (lambda (y)
70+ (mucs-define-coding-system
71+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
72+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
73+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
74+ (cdr x)))
75 `((utf-8
76 (utf-8-unix
77 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
78
79Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
80Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
81
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82* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
83
84This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
85of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
86version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
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87dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
88around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
89incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
90". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
91directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
92variables).
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93
94The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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95`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
96when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
97unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
98run the script like this:
99
173de997 100 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
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101
102(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
103the script).
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104
105Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
106Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
107
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108* Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
109undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
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110
111This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
112with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
113GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
114from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
115compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
116link stage.
117
118A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
119
120 make CC=gcc
121
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122Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
123with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
124
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125* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
126
127Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
128version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
129necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
130__MSVCRT__, like so:
131
132 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
133
134* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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135
136The error message might be something like this:
137
c24be289 138 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
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139 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
140 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
141 '0xffffffff'
142 Stop.
143
144This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
145which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
146`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
147endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
148or EOL conversions.
149
150The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
151change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
152in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
153which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
154mangling them.
155
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156* Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
157
158The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
159C backtrace printed by GDB:
160
161 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
162 (gdb) where
163 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
164 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
165 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
166 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
167
168This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
169of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
170but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
171other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
172distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
173GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
174following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
175distribution:
176
cbfe0252 177 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
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178 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
179 know what's really going on here. */
180 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
181 0x10000000. */
182 #if defined __linux__
183 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
184 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
185 #endif
186 #endif
187 #endif /* 0 */
188
189Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
190the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
191should now succeed.
192
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193* JPEG images aren't displayed.
194
195This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
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196Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
197correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
198against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
9ed04369 199
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200* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
201
202This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
203defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
204patch to assert.h should solve this:
205
206*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
207--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
208***************
209*** 41,47 ****
210 /*
211 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
212 */
213! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
214
215 #else /* debugging enabled */
216
217--- 41,47 ----
218 /*
219 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
220 */
221! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
222
223 #else /* debugging enabled */
224
225
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226
227* Improving performance with slow X connections
228
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229There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
230be carried out at the same time:
231
2321) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
233 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by
234 configuring Emacs with option `--without-xim'. Configuring Emacs
235 without XIM does not affect the use of Emacs' own input methods, which
236 are part of the Leim package.
237
2382) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
239 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
240
2413) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
242 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
243
2444) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
245 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
246 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
247 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
248 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
249 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a seperate
250 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
251 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
252 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
253 For more about lbxproxy, see:
254 http://www.xfree86.org/4.2.0/lbxproxy.1.html
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255
256* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
257
258By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
259FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
260current keymap to a file with the command
261
262 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
263
264Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
265definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
266key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
267to look like this
268
269 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
270
271to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
272
273 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
274
275* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
276
277A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
278into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
279incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
280other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
281been filed.
282
283* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
284
285This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
2862.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
287event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
288Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
289
290A workaround for this is to add something like
291
292emacs.waitForWM: false
293
294to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
295frame's parameter list, like this:
296
297 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
298
299(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
300
301* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
302
303This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
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304Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
305neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
306problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
307`.emacs'.
308
309To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
310type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
311property.
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313* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
314click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
315is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
316problem disappears.
317
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318* There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
319XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
320one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
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321For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
322"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
323used with neXtaw at run time.
324
325The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
326want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
327built Emacs with.
ed0d1d91 328
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329* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
330
331This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
332a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
333--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
334
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335* Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
336
337This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
338terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
339If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
340version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
341and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
342
343All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
344problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
345terminfo when built.
346
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347* Error messages about undefined colors on X.
348
349The messages might say something like this:
350
351 Unable to load color "grey95"
352
353(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
354
355 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
356
357These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
358many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
359resources to load all the colors it needs.
360
361A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
362
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363* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
364
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365Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
366emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
367entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
368"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
369supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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370Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
371uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
372"colors".
373
374In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
375``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
376back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
377use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
378doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
379sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
380it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
381capability).
382
383Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
384attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
385incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
386this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 387
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388Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
389of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 390entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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391`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
392emulator.
ed85f61d 393
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394Beginning with version 21.3, Emacs supports the --color command-line
395option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
396modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
397for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
398
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399Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
400Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
401Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
402recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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403global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
404`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 405
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406* Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
407
408This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
409ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
410These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
411the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
412(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
413blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
414cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
415always blinks.
416
417A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
418enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
419the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
420cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
421the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
422cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
423
424To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
425`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
426the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
427produce a modified terminfo entry.
428
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429Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
430change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
431
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432* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
433
434The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
435emulation for which it is set up.
436
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437Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
438Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
439On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
440--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
441successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
442lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
443menu placement.
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444
445On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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446locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
447what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
448developers.
339b95d5 449
fa99e2a4 450* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.2.
b87207a0 451
d6cdfce6 452Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
6fb6f3ac 453is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
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454displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
455synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
456waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
457pop-up menu interaction.
f936978f 458
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459Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
460for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
461
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462There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
463mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
464frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
465after moving back into it.
b87207a0 466
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467Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
468not as severely as in 21.1.
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469
470Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
471characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
472
473An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
474Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
475
fa99e2a4 476Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.2). Some
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477of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
478in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
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479characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
480work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
481you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
482the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
483ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
484appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
485yet.)
486
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487Windows uses UTF-16 encoding to deal with multilingual text (text not
488encodable in the `system codepage') in the clipboard. To deal with
489this, load the library `utf-16' and use `set-selection-coding-system'
490to set the clipboard coding system to `utf-16-le-dos'. This won't
491cope with Far Eastern (`CJK') text; if necessary, install the Mule-UCS
492package (see etc/MORE.STUFF), whose `utf-16-le-dos' coding system does
493encode a lot of CJK characters.
e085efdb 494
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495The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
496month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
497of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
498library function.
fa99e2a4 499
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500* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
501
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502There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
503by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
504default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
505
506If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
507`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
508shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
509the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
510Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
cc305a60 511explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
c8d9b4ee 512
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513* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
514
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515This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
516(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
517(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
518configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
519files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
520left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
521itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
cbfe0252 522Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 523
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524In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
525machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
526(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
527This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
528
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529If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
530(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
531you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
532force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
533problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
534blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
535`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
536options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
537`/etc/auto.home'.
538
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539Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
540a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
541waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
542to work around the problem.
d9810886 543
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544Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
545onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
546you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
547`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
548
549 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
550
551The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
552
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553* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
554
555This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
556via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
557binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
558
559 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
560
561We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
562build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
563
9ed04369 564* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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565
566Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
567other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
568that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
569size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
570when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
571fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
572
573To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
574
575 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
576
577If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
578problem.
579
580The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
581`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
582`xset fp rehash'.
583
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584* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
585src/s/hpux10.h.
586
e9a0a549 587* Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
ec6bd013 588libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
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589Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
590if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
591older version.
4e0bd469 592
4dea3d52 593* Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
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594
595By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
596`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
597any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
598vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
599parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
600in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
cbfe0252 601pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
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602introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
603through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
604to the end of a very large buffer.
605
473347f6 606Beginning with version 21.3, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
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607is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
608to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
609indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
473347f6 610
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611If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
612makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
613fontification by setting the variable
614`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
615be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
616
617Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
618in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
619
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620* When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
621or messed up.
622
cbfe0252 623For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
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624empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
625background.
626
627This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
628definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
629solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
630option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style.
631
632Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
633applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
634(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
635so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
636Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
637present or commented out:
638
639 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
640 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
641 Emacs*Foreground
642 Emacs*Background
643
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644* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
645
646Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
647MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
648port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
649keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
650of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
651
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652* Dired is very slow.
653
654This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
655time. Possible reasons for this include:
656
657 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
658 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
659
660 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
661
662 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
663
664To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
665`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
666invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
667(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
668
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669* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
670
671If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
672due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
673and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
674port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
675are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
676confuses ange-ftp.
677
678The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
679(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
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680Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
681directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
682variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
683client's executable. For example:
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684
685 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
686
687If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
688this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
689
690 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
691
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692* Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
693under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
a953a8d3 694
2ebf6139
GM
695* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
696are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
697so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
698Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
699
cc2f2825 700* Compiling on AIX 4.3.x or 4.4 fails.
ec383c7d 701
9e2305c3 702This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
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703the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
704redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
705is to use the default compiler `cc'.
706
a14e05ac 707* Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
e1f9a6b3 708`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
9ec9d3d2 709longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
1d297d9b 710
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711* PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
712
713PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
714as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
715of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
716sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
717HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
718(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
719(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
720
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721* The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
722
723It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
724Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
725please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
726argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
727
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728* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
729
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730This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
731slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
732e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
733Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
734correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 735
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736* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
737
738The error message might be something like this:
739
740 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
741
742This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
743built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
744for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
745corrects that.
746
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747* ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
748
749This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
750defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
751runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
752
753The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
754
f4f4ee4d
GM
755* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
756from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
757shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
758These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
759library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
760
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761Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
762process invokes Emacs several times.
763
f4f4ee4d
GM
764On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
765environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
766can be found.
767
768Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
769Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
770specified run-time search path in the executable.
771
8643647c 772On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
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773linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
774backtraces like this:
775
776 (dbx) where
777 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
778 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
779 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
780 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
781 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
782 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
783 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
784 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
785 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
786
8643647c
RS
787(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
788happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
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789forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
790to work around the problem.
791
f4f4ee4d
GM
792Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
793
0c6456ad 794* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
9b2999d0
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795C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
796compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
797release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
798another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
799and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 800
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801* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
802
803The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
804following message:
805
806 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
807
808To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
809INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
810functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
811
812 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
813 {
814 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
815 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
816
817Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
818with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
819
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820* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
821
822A typical error message might be something like
823
824 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
825
826This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
827Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
828are:
829
830 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
831
832 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
833 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
834 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
835
836One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
837fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
838the problematic line(s) and correct them.
839
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840* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
841
842The typical error message might be like this:
843
844 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
845
846This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
847tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
848files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
849Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
850when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
851required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
b75b82ab 852it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
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853
854Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
855file could fail to load if it is compressed.
856
857The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
858file.
859
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860Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
861lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
862print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
863
864 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
865
866If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
867and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
868load-path.
869
42303132
JR
870* Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
871
872An example of such an error is:
873
874 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
875
876This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your classpath.
877The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
878present in load-path:
879
880 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
881
882If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
883and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
884load-path.
885
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886* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
887
888If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
889representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
f2d176f2
CW
890ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
891version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
892systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
893ftp client. On a Debian system, type
f3d6f4ee 894
f2d176f2 895 update-alternatives --config ftp
f3d6f4ee
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896
897and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
898
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JR
899* Emacs built on Windows 9x/ME crashes at startup on Windows XP,
900or Emacs built on XP crashes at startup on Windows 9x/ME.
901
902There appear to be general problems running programs compiled on
903Windows 9x/ME on Windows XP and vice-versa, at least when compilation
904is done with MSVC 6.0. This affects other programs as well as Emacs.
905The compatibility options in the program properties on Windows XP may
906help in some cases.
907
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908* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
909
910The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
911work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
912was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
913work when an antivirus package is installed.
914
915The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
916mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
917or disable it entirely.
918
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JR
919* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
920
921This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
922when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
923cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
cbfe0252 924http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
f29d1e75 925
4593687f 926* Windows 95/98/ME crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
c24be289 927
4593687f 928When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
c24be289 929Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
94e83484 930particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
5f08ab61 931program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
94e83484 932PATH.
c24be289 933
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934* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
935mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
936exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
937seen.
938
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939* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
940
941This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
942Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
943modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
944keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
945modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
946was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
947Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
948
949The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
950modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
951and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
952which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
953the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
954modifier:
955
956 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
957
958A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
959is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
960
961 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
962
963This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
964keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
965keys can serve as Meta.
966
967The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
968keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
969
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DL
970* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
971remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
972keyboard(5).
973
974Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
975% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
976% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
977
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978* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
979
980Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
981It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
982system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
983the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
984
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985* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
986
987This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
988and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
989manager.
990
991This bug was reported to Sun as
992
993 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
994 Bug Reports: 4463537
995
2aa82bcf 996Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
0de9f9a8
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997reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
998library xiiimp.so.
999
1000Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
1001the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
1002can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
1003
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1004* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
1005
1006This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
1007assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
1008To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
1009or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
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1010Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
1011
1012* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
1013
1014Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
1015
1016 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
1017 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
1018 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
1019 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1020 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1021 /******************************************************************
1022
1023 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
1024 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
1025 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
1026 XLCd lcd;
1027 {
1028 - char* begin;
1029 - char* end;
1030 + char* begin = NULL;
1031 + char* end = NULL;
1032 char* ret;
1033 int i = 0;
1034 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
1035 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
1036 }
1037 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
1038 if (ret != NULL) {
1039 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1040 + if (begin != NULL) {
1041 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1042 + } else {
1043 + ret[0] = '\0';
1044 + }
1045 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
1046 }
1047 return ret;
1048
1049
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DL
1050* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
1051
1052This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
1053
1054* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
1055
1056This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
1057It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
1058
de121241
EZ
1059* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1060
1061This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1062combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1063definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1064might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1065purposes.
1066
1067We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1068you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1069
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1070* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
1071the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
1072
1073You can fix this by editing the file:
1074
1075 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
1076
1077Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
1078
1079 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1080
1081that should read:
1082
1083 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1084
1085Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
1086
1087* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
1088 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
1089
1090This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
1091Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
1092
1093* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
1094
1095Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
1096problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
1097documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
1098
1099* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1100
1101These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1102particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1103configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1104configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1105change this.
1106
1107* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
1108
1109When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
1110(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
1111then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
1112correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
1113gives the appearance of "double spacing".
1114
e9a0a549 1115To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
a933dad1
DL
1116feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
1117
a933dad1
DL
1118* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
1119
1120This problem manifests itself as an error message
1121
1122 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
1123
1124The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
1125were built for an older system version,
1126
1127 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
1128
1129made the problem go away.
1130
1131* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
1132
1133This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
1134as of 8 Dec 1998.
1135
1136The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1137
1138* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1139the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1140next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1141
1142* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1143
1144This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1145a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1146likely to cause it.
1147
1148We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1149
1150* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1151
1152This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1153
1154* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1155
1156This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1157
1158* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1159Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1160`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1161'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1162
1163* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1164(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1165Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1166earlier versions.
1167
1168--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1169+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1170@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1171 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1172 (cond
1173 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1174- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1175+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1176 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1177 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1178 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1179
d238f982
EZ
1180* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1181
1182Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1183these problems.
1184
d7185f9d
EZ
1185* No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
1186
1187Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
1188byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
1189
d238f982 1190* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
a933dad1
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1191about a read-only tex output buffer.
1192
1193This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1194versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1195package.
1196
1197diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1198*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1199--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1200***************
1201*** 545,551 ****
1202 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1203 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1204 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1205! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1206 (set-buffer buffer)
1207 (if dir (cd dir))
1208 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1209- --- 545,552 ----
1210 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1211 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1212 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1213! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1214! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1215 (set-buffer buffer)
1216 (if dir (cd dir))
1217 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1218
1219* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1220in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1221
1222 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1223
1224This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1225003082 August 11, 1998.
1226
1227* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1228
1229The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1230 (standard-display-european t)
1231That should be changed to
1232 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1233
1234* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1235
1236You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1237supplies the `install-info' command.
1238
1239* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1240
1241To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1242rights, containing this text:
1243
1244--------------------------------
1245xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1246keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1247keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1248EOF
1249
1250xmodmap - << EOF
1251clear mod1
1252keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1253add mod1 = Meta_L
1254keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1255add mod2 = Mode_switch
1256EOF
1257--------------------------------
1258
17a37d87
EZ
1259* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1260
62c485d2
GM
1261This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1262requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1263of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1264which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1265while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1266
1267 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1268
62c485d2 1269A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1270
a933dad1
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1271* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1272in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1273drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1274
1275This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1276device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1277work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1278
1279* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1280
1281See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1282for character composition.
1283
1284* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1285
1286This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1287full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1288/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1289
1290127.0.0.1 localhost
1291129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1292
1293The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1294
1295* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1296
1297So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1298is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1299properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1300`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1301in Emacs.
1302
1303* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1304
3d00585e
EZ
1305This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1306characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1307characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1308support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1309
3d00585e
EZ
1310To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1311this at your shell's prompt:
1312
1313 ispell -vv
1314
1315and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1316"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1317does not.
1318
1319To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1320in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1321Then rebuild the speller.
1322
1323Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1324version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1325
1326Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1327in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1328Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1329it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1330spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
a933dad1 1331
7838ea1b
GM
1332If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
1333you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
1334can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
1335in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
1336
a933dad1
DL
1337* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
13385.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1339
1340This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1341One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1342known to work.
1343
1344* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1345CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1346
1347This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1348
1349Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1350events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1351distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1352combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
c24be289
JR
1353AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
1354to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 1355
b5cb4652
EZ
1356* Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server
1357
1358If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
1359reported to prevent the crashes.
1360
1361* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
a933dad1
DL
1362
1363The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1364screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1365display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1366to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1367
e9a0a549
EZ
1368This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
1369as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
1370problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1
DL
1371
1372There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1373running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1374un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1375selection".
1376
1377Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1378please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1379If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1380here.
1381
1382* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1383
1384The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1385Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1386(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1387You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1388You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1389look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1390are currently recommended for your host.
1391
1392On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1393105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1394105284-18 might fix it again.
1395
3156909f
PE
1396* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1397
1398This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1399the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1400support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1401If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
DL
1402
1403One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1404For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1405variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1406lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1407should do.
1408
3156909f
PE
1409pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1410if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1411libraries.
a933dad1 1412
e96c5c69
JD
1413* Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1414
1415This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1416seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1417To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1418and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1419
a933dad1
DL
1420* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1421
1422You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1423either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1424calls for specifying this.
1425
1426If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1427mail-host-address to the value you want.
1428
1429* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1430
1431Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1432virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1433the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1434error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1435exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1436memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1437
1438You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1439But you have to be root to do it.
1440
1441According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1442
1443 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1444 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1445 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1446 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1447 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1448
1449(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1450These changes take effect when you reboot.
1451
1452* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1453
1454We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1455scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1456happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1457on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1458
1459Here's how to do this:
1460
1461 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1462
1463If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1464try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1465to normal, do
1466
1467 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1468
1469* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1470
1471Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1472supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1473many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1474
1475If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1476server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1477You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1478
1479The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1480display all the characters Emacs supports.
1481
4c635a29
DL
1482Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1483missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1484character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1485but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1486of this character to display a space.
1487
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DL
1488* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1489
1490You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1491
1492* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1493
1494This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1495than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1496lines do not overlap.
1497
1498* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1499video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1500
1501This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1502your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1503check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1504
1505* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1506directories that have the +t bit.
1507
1508This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1509Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1510with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1511link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1512
1513If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1514file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1515
1516* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1517commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1518
1519You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1520
1521 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1522
1523* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1524appear on disk.
1525
1526This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1527remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1528implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1529detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1530calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1531where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1532
1533* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1534
1535If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1536will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1537in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1538did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1539character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1540must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1541
1542You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1543them to two different keys.
1544
1545* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1546
1547If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1548without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1549
1550* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1551
1552Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1553NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1554entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1555listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1556the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1557old POP protocol.
1558
1559* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1560
1561This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1562use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1563an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1564happens to exist on your X server).
1565
1566* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1567
1568This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1569prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1570to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1571
1572Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1573(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1574
1575* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1576
1577We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1578the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1579does not happen.
1580
1581* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1582
1583We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1584Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1585makes the problem stop:
1586
1587105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1588105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1589106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1590105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1591
1592Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1593suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1594
1595106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1596106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1597105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1598
1599* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1600
1601`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1602The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1603
1604The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1605"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1606with the user.
1607
1608On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1609pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1610communicate with the subprocess.
1611
1612On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1613relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1614redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1615stdin.
1616
1617A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1618
1619For Perl 4:
1620
1621 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1622 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1623 ***************
1624 *** 68,74 ****
1625 $rcfile=".perldb";
1626 }
1627 else {
1628 ! $console = "con";
1629 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1630 }
1631
1632 --- 68,74 ----
1633 $rcfile=".perldb";
1634 }
1635 else {
1636 ! $console = "";
1637 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1638 }
1639
1640
1641 For Perl 5:
1642 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1643 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1644 ***************
1645 *** 22,28 ****
1646 $rcfile=".perldb";
1647 }
1648 elsif (-e "con") {
1649 ! $console = "con";
1650 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1651 }
1652 else {
1653 --- 22,28 ----
1654 $rcfile=".perldb";
1655 }
1656 elsif (-e "con") {
1657 ! $console = "";
1658 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1659 }
1660 else {
1661
a933dad1
DL
1662* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1663
1664There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1665
1666 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1667 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1668 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1669
1670To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1671subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1672them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1673incorrect library functions.
1674
f1e54ce1
EZ
1675* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1676
1677If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1678Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1679program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1680config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1681the front of your PATH environment variable.
1682
a933dad1
DL
1683* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1684like make-docfile.
1685
1686This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1687variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1688compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1689the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1690
1691* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1692run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a01325b8
EZ
1693
1694Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
a933dad1
DL
1695immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1696the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
a01325b8
EZ
1697and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1698
1699Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1700the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1701Lisp.
a933dad1
DL
1702
1703This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1704support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1705characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1706You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1707filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1708compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1709explains this issue in more detail.
1710
a01325b8
EZ
1711Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1712MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1713by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1714unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1715them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1716must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1717properly truncated.
1718
a933dad1
DL
1719* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1720
1721 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1722
1723This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1724on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1725value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1726works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1727support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1728undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1729[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1730`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1731your system works as before.
1732
1733* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1734
1735This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1736You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1737
c24be289 1738* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows.
a933dad1
DL
1739
1740This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1741you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
c24be289
JR
1742and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
1743more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
1744or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
a933dad1
DL
1745
1746* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1747
1748This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1749version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1750definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1751incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1752does not work with this version of ncurses.
1753
1754The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1755
1dd8b979
EZ
1756* Emacs does not start complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
1757
10a763e5
RS
1758If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
1759systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
1760ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
1761cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
1762libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
1763obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
1764
1765The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
1766the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
1767symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
1768it constitutes a separate package.
1dd8b979 1769
a933dad1
DL
1770* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1771
1772Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1773editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1774as GCC.
1775
1776* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1777on GNU/Linux systems.
1778
1779This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
17801.3.75.
1781
1782* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1783
1784There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1785caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1786problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1787is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1788
1789Using the old library version is a workaround.
1790
1791* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1792
1793This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1794version of Solaris that you are using.
1795
1796* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1797
1798Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1799102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1800Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1801by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1802However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1803
1804Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1805you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1806We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1807for certain.
1808
1809 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1810 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1811 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1812
1813(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1814with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1815
1816If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1817bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1818
1819Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1820Solaris 2.5.
1821
1822* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1823
1824If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1825of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1826called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1827
1828* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1829Emacs built with Motif.
1830
1831This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1832such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1833
1834* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1835
1836A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1837in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1838find that string, and take out the spaces.
1839
1840Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1841
1842* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1843
1844This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1845many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1846swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1847can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1848command `swap -l'.
1849
1850You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1851line like this:
1852
1853/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1854
1855where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1856by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1857that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1858new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1859information.
1860
1861The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1862swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1863on the network that can log on to the host.
1864
1865If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1866the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1867some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1868icons.
1869
1870You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1871FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1872("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1873ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1874
1875* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1876character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1877
1878One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1879away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1880XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1881
1882* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1883
1884This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1885on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1886version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1887it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1888
1889* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1890(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1891
1892Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1893
1894* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1895with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1896
1897On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1898`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1899Definitions" to make them defined.
1900
1901* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1902 ld: Undefined symbol
1903 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1904 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1905
1906The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1907or link libXmu statically.
1908
1909* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1910 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1911 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1912
1913This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1914these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1915you build Emacs:
1916
1917 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1918 chmod 664 libIM.a
1919 ranlib libIM.a
1920
1921Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1922Makefile).
1923
1924* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1925
1926A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1927the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1928
1929We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1930
1931* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1932Windows.
1933
1934A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1935Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1936problem.
1937
1938* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1939
1940Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1941and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1942know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1943memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1944However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1945
1946You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1947arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1948information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1949is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1950
1951Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1952configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1953removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1954and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1955the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1956
1957* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1958
1959twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1960You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1961
1962 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1963
1964* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1965
1966This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1967the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1968Emacs's configure script.
1969
1970* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1971
1972This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1973problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1974configure script.
1975
1976* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1977
1978If you get errors such as
1979
1980 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1981 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1982 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1983
1984This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1985to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1986script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1987make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1988ones available when you build Emacs.
1989
1990* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1991other non-English HP keyboards too).
1992
1993This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1994shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1995configures the X server.
1996
1997 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1998 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1999 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
2000 EOF
2001
2002 xmodmap - << EOF
2003 clear mod1
2004 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
2005 add mod1 = Meta_L
2006 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
2007 add mod2 = Mode_switch
2008 EOF
2009
2010* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
2011
2012Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
2013command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
2014Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
2015manager to use some other command. You can disable the
2016shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
2017
2018 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
2019
2020* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
2021
2022There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
2023that replacing the mouse made it stop.
2024
2025* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
2026
2027The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2028be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2029to allocate ptys reliably.
2030
2031* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
2032
2033The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
2034Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
2035compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
2036workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
2037syms.h.
2038
2039* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
2040
2041People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
2042startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
2043
2044This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
2045Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
2046improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
2047networked and non-networked machines.
2048
2049Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
2050
2051** Networked Case
2052
2053First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
2054exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
2055(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
2056
2057 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
2058
2059Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
2060lines:
2061
2062 order hosts, bind
2063 multi on
2064
2065Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
2066indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
2067database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
2068dynamically allocate ip addresses).
2069
2070** Non-Networked Case
2071
2072The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
2073However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
2074simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
2075`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
2076file is not necessary with this approach.
2077
2078* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
2079forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
2080
2081casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
2082after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
2083
2084 #if ThreadedX
2085 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2086 #endif
2087
2088to:
2089
2090 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
2091 #if ThreadedX
2092 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2093 #endif
2094 #endif
2095
2096Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
2097(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
2098OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
2099Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
2100definition for your type of machine and system.
2101
2102Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
2103the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
2104Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
2105
2106For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
2107101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
2108to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
2109patch.
2110
2111However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
2112he changed
2113 #define ThreadedX YES
2114to
2115 #define ThreadedX NO
2116in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
2117`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
2118typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
2119
2120* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
2121 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
2122
2123This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
2124with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
2125another escape character in kermit. One user did
2126
2127 set escape-character 17
2128
2129in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
2130
2131* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
2132
2133This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
2134
2135 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
2136
2137That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
2138do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
2139explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
2140the resource prevents the problem.
2141
2142* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
2143
2144We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2145one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
2146
2147100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2148100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2149100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2150100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2151100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2152
2153We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2154which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2155
2156* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
2157
2158This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
2159installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2160specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2161corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2162the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2163Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2164files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2165original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2166not to work.
2167
2168The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2169when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2170is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2171same directory where system header files are kept.
2172
2173* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2174
2175This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2176are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2177does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2178later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2179described in the Solaris FAQ
2180<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2181to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2182
2183* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2184
2185This shell command should fix it:
2186
2187 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2188
2189* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2190
2191On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2192with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2193version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2194C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2195GCC.
2196
2197* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2198
2199This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2200for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2201/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2202
2203* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2204
2205On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2206works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2207bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2208the Files menu).
2209
2210This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2211due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2212knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2213workaround can be found.
2214
2215* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2216
2217The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2218that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2219fonts, so it does not work.
2220
2221This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2222the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2223emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2224that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2225resources affect Emacs also:
2226
2227 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2228 *Background: scoBackground
2229 *Foreground: scoForeground
2230
2231The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2232Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2233
2234 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2235 Emacs*Background: white
2236 Emacs*Foreground: black
2237
2238(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2239suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2240starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2241environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2242as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2243/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2244but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2245Open Desktop display.
2246
2247These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2248machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2249
2250* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2251
2252This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2253The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2254
2255* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2256
2257This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2258doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2259because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2260libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2261those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2262install them and rebuild Emacs.
2263
2264* Loading fonts is very slow.
2265
2266You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2267Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2268directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2269"fonts.scale".
2270
2271If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2272font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2273
2274With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2275directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2276Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2277
2278* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2279
2280Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2281ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2282lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2283treated as control characters.
2284
2285You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2286releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2287
2288* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2289
2290Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2291versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2292cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2293This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2294processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2295
2296Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2297the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2298
2299The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2300
2301* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2302
2303This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2304C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2305
2306* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2307 segmentation fault and core dump.
2308
2309This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2310added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2311
2312 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2313
2314If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2315untar it :-).
2316
2317* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2318
2319To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2320
2321 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2322
2323and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2324
2325The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2326cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2327
2328* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2329
2330There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2331the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2332workaround/fix is:
2333
2334 cd /lib
2335 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2336 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2337
2338* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2339
2340If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2341with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2342the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2343libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2344toolkit.)
2345
2346If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2347lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2348X11R4, then use it in the link.
2349
2350* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2351
2352This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2353Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2354Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2355where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2356
2357So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2358
2359* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2360
2361This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2362smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2363on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2364problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2365
2366 if ($?EMACS) then
2367 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2368 unset edit
2369 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2370 endif
2371 endif
2372
2373* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2374parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2375
2376This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2377 emacs*Cursor: black
2378(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2379that isn't a color.)
2380
2381The fix is to correct your X resources.
2382
2383* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2384
2385If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2386_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2387-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2388
2389This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2390extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2391
2392* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2393
2394This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2395to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2396Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2397
2398* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2399
2400This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2401had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2402
2403* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2404
2405If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2406resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2407renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2408font.
2409
2410One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2411your font path, like this:
2412
2413 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2414
2415* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2416
2417An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2418
2419 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2420
2421This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2422individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2423want, rewrite the resource.
2424
2425To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2426-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2427the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2428
2429* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2430
2431On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2432unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2433toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2434libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2435unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2436and Solaris in version 19.29.
2437
2438* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2439
2440This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2441commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2442Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2443hand.
2444
2445* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2446
2447This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2448The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2449such as bash.
2450
2451* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2452
2453A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2454exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2455applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2456communicating through pipes.
2457
2458* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2459
2460Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2461sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2462delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2463program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2464means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2465command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2466obtain the destination address.
2467
2468There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2469In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2470non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
24712.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
24724.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2473have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2474of this writing, these official versions are available:
2475
2476 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2477 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2478 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2479 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2480 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2481
2482 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2483 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2484
2485* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2486
2487 Could not load program emacs
2488 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2489 Error was: Exec format error
2490
2491or this one:
2492
2493 Could not load program .emacs
2494 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2495 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2496 Error was: Exec format error
2497
2498These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2499compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2500
2501* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2502
2503 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2504 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2505
2506This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2507libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2508X11Dev... with smit.
2509
2510* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2511
2512This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2513Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2514character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2515to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2516
2517For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2518
2519 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2520
2521If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2522Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2523xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2524
2525* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2526
2527You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2528though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2529or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2530
2531* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2532
2533These control the actions of Emacs.
2534~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2535EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2536"load" will search.
2537
2538If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2539of them, then try again.
2540
2541* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2542
2543Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2544mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2545the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2546
2547Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2548you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2549operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2550configure script) that reads:
2551#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2552This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2553the kernel bug.
2554
2555* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2556directly with an X server.
2557
2558If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2559does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2560whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2561followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2562it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2563have made the key binding correctly.
2564
2565If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2566be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2567server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2568default.
2569
2570If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2571
2572 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2573 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2574
2575If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2576commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2577are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2578modifier bit not otherwise used.
2579
2580If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2581keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2582some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2583commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2584
2585Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2586into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2587
2588* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2589
2590On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2591file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2592does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2593value is just ten seconds.
2594
2595If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2596
2597* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2598
2599On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2600in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2601expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2602in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2603
2604The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2605anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2606
2607I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2608going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2609Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2610in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2611
2612* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2613
2614Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2615the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2616sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2617
2618* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2619
2620Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2621
2622* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2623the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2624* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2625* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2626
2627This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2628libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2629shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2630similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2631
2632The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2633the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2634
2635The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2636installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2637
2638On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2639
2640If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2641then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2642do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2643or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2644that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2645be careful not to lose the others.
2646
2647Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2648
2649#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2650
2651Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2652the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2653again to say this:
2654
2655#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2656
2657* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2658
2659 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2660
2661The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2662
2663The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2664
2665* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2666
2667This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2668with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2669corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2670
2671* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2672
2673People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2674Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2675
2676* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2677
2678christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2679
2680The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2681execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2682tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2683but tty is giving it back 3.
2684
2685The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2686word:
2687
2688if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2689
2690should be changed to:
2691
2692if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2693
2694Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2695and into .login.
2696
2697* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2698
2699Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2700
2701* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2702* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2703
2704One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2705your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2706the environment.
2707
2708* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2709
2710If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2711`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2712that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2713with a floating point option other than the default.
2714
2715It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2716crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2717However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2718floating point option: -fsoft.
2719
2720* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2721
2722The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2723arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2724tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2725
2726I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2727whether this problem is present on a given system.
2728
2729* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2730 as a concentrator.
2731
2732This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
27337 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2734
2735* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2736
2737This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2738version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2739
2740* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2741 terminal type.
2742
2743The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2744environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2745provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2746emulates.
2747
2748Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2749in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2750it only if it is undefined.
2751
2752 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2753
2754Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2755happen in a non-login shell.
2756
2757* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2758
2759People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2760not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2761the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2762the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2763
2764You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2765However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2766you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2767
2768The easy way to do this is to put
2769
2770 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2771
2772in your site-init.el file.
2773
2774* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2775
2776On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2777may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2778is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2779As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2780
2781* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2782
2783You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2784
2785 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2786
2787This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2788Here is how to make more of them.
2789
2790 % cd /dev
2791 % ls pty*
2792 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2793 % /etc/crpty 8
2794 # creates eight new pty's
2795
2796* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2797
2798This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2799Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2800
2801It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2802space available on the machine.
2803
2804On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2805subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2806for large blocks (many pages).
2807
2808* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2809* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2810* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2811* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2812
2813This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2814fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2815binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2816
2817In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2818It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2819a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2820itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2821when unpacking the shell archive.
2822
2823I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2824what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2825file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2826
2827If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2828nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2829
2830 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2831 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2832 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2833 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2834 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2835 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2836 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2837 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2838 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2839 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2840 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2841 and remake temacs.
2842 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2843
2844* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2845
2846This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2847files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2848space than was allocated.
2849
2850This could be caused by
2851 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2852 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2853 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2854 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2855 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2856 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2857 deleting that file.
2858 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2859 (not from the directory you expected).
2860 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2861 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2862 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2863 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2864 the space required.
2865
2866If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2867of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2868
2869But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2870of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2871problem.
2872
2873* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2874
2875You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2876Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2877will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2878and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2879
2880Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2881than the corresponding .el file.
2882
2883* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2884
2885Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2886
28871) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2888as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2889it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2890value in the man page for a.out (5).
2891
28922) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2893initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2894of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2895not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2896may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2897
2898* Compilation errors on VMS.
2899
2900You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2901variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2902This is not an error. Ignore it.
2903
2904VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2905were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2906
2907There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2908in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2909 char c = -1, d = 1;
2910 int i;
2911
2912 i = d ? c : d;
2913The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2914conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2915constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2916
2917* rmail gets error getting new mail
2918
2919rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2920called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2921the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2922
2923There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2924the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2925`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2926this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2927the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2928IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2929SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2930
2931If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2932prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2933you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2934`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2935
2936 chgrp mail movemail
2937 chmod 2755 movemail
2938
2939If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2940prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2941you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2942`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2943make install.
2944
2945 chgrp mail movemail
2946 chmod 2755 movemail
2947
2948Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2949installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2950installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2951/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2952mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2953directory copy is ineffective.
2954
2955* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2956
2957This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2958used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2959away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2960streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2961user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2962properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2963input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2964easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2965
2966There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2967
2968 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2969 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2970 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2971
2972First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2973they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2974"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2975escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2976and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2977control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2978
2979Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2980needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2981by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2982rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2983your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2984it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2985the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2986problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2987to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2988
2989For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2990giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2991codes. You might as well try it.
2992
2993If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2994through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2995computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2996much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2997control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2998you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2999replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
3000measures can make Emacs semi-work.
3001
3002You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
3003handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
3004enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
3005now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
3006enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
3007control handling.)
3008
3009If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
3010is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
3011other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
3012and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
3013other control characters are already used by emacs.
3014
3015IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
3016Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
3017order to continue.
3018
3019If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
3020certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
3021`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
3022automatically. Here is an example:
3023
3024(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3025
3026If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
3027and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
3028manually.
3029
3030I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
3031assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
3032control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
3033merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
3034widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
3035use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
3036will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
3037of inferior systems.
3038
3039* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
3040
3041For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
3042control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
3043terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
3044that wants to use flow control.
3045
3046You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
3047If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
3048flow control, as described in the preceding section.
3049
3050If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
3051into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
3052shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
3053
3054* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
3055
3056Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
3057control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
3058On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
3059control on the local system.
3060
3061One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
3062(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
3063stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
3064"stty start u stop u" will do this.
3065
3066Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
3067around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
3068issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
3069
3070If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
3071M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
3072if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
3073following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
3074
3075(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3076
3077See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
3078info.
3079
3080* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
3081
3082This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
3083terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
3084the combination of features specified for that terminal.
3085
3086The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
3087Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
3088(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
3089terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
3090what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
3091and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
3092There are several possibilities:
3093
30941) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
3095
3096In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
3097need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
3098
30992) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
3100 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
3101 by termcap.
3102
3103This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
3104Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
3105and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
3106classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
3107Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
3108tested on many kinds of terminals.
3109
31103) The termcap entry is wrong.
3111
3112See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
3113that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
3114for certain terminals.
3115
31164) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
3117 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
3118
3119This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
3120in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
3121
3122* Output from Control-V is slow.
3123
3124On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
3125Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
3126to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
3127before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
3128the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
3129it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
3130
3131If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
3132that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
3133specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
3134concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
3135send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
3136fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
3137time as the operations really take.
3138
3139Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
3140at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
3141terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
3142operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
3143flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
3144an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
3145Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
3146cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
3147not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
3148is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
3149
3150Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
3151multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
3152termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
3153fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
3154each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
3155to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
3156`cm' string.
3157
3158You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
3159has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3160take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3161
3162A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3163of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3164
3165* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3166
3167The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3168
3169 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3170 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3171
3172This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3173
3174* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3175
3176Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3177after a day or two.
3178
3179The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3180the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3181character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3182of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3183overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3184to it.
3185
3186For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3187and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3188other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3189but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3190that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3191important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3192
3193If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3194you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3195 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3196You can probably access help-command via f1.
3197
3198* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3199It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3200but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3201causes it.
3202
3203 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3204 call in the RFS server.
3205
3206 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3207 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3208 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3209 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3210
3211 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3212
3213 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3214 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3215 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3216 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3217 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3218 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3219 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3220
3221 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3222
3223 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3224 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3225 retrieving revision 1.2
3226 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3227 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3228 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3229 ***************
3230 *** 163,169 ****
3231 /*
3232 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3233 */
3234 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3235 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3236 else
3237 {
3238 --- 166,172 ----
3239 /*
3240 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3241 */
3242 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3243 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3244 else
3245 {
3246
3247* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3248
3249You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3250
3251 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3252 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3253
3254These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3255Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3256may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3257on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3258in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3259can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3260that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3261
3262As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3263you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3264can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3265should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3266array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3267 Lisp_Object *args;
3268 ...
3269 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3270putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3271 Lisp_Object *args;
3272 Lisp_Object tem;
3273 ...
3274 tem = args[i];
3275 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3276causes the problem to go away.
3277The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3278so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3279
3280* 68000 C compiler problems
3281
3282Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3283These are some that have been observed.
3284
3285** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3286This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3287if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3288
3289** "cannot reclaim" error.
3290
3291This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3292line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3293simpler expressions.
3294
3295** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3296
3297If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3298Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3299
3300struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3301
3302lose (arg)
3303 struct foo arg;
3304{
3305 test ((int *) arg.y);
3306}
3307
3308If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3309In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3310((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3311
3312This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3313of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3314
3315* C compilers lose on returning unions
3316
3317I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3318Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3319defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3320
3321This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3322of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3323
53854552
EZ
3324\f
3325Local variables:
3326mode: outline
3327paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3328end: