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[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
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1This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
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4* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
5
6This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
8version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
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9dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
10around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
11incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
12". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
13directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
14variables).
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15
16The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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17`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
18when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
19unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
20run the script like this:
21
173de997 22 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
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23
24(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
25the script).
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26
27Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
28Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
29
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30* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
31
32Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
33version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
34necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
35__MSVCRT__, like so:
36
37 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
38
39* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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40
41The error message might be something like this:
42
c24be289 43 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
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44 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
45 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
46 '0xffffffff'
47 Stop.
48
49This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
50which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
51`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
52endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
53or EOL conversions.
54
55The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
56change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
57in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
58which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
59mangling them.
60
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61* Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
62
63The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
64C backtrace printed by GDB:
65
66 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
67 (gdb) where
68 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
69 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
70 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
71 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
72
73This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
74of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
75but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
76other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
77distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
78GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
79following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
80distribution:
81
cbfe0252 82 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
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83 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
84 know what's really going on here. */
85 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
86 0x10000000. */
87 #if defined __linux__
88 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
89 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
90 #endif
91 #endif
92 #endif /* 0 */
93
94Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
95the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
96should now succeed.
97
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98* JPEG images aren't displayed.
99
100This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
101Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
102
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103* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
104
105This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
106defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
107patch to assert.h should solve this:
108
109*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
110--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
111***************
112*** 41,47 ****
113 /*
114 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
115 */
116! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
117
118 #else /* debugging enabled */
119
120--- 41,47 ----
121 /*
122 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
123 */
124! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
125
126 #else /* debugging enabled */
127
128
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129
130* Improving performance with slow X connections
131
132If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
133language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by
134configuring Emacs with option `--without-xim'. Configuring Emacs
135without XIM does not affect the use of Emacs' own input methods, which
136are part of the Leim package.
137
138If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
139switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
140
141* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
142
143By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
144FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
145current keymap to a file with the command
146
147 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
148
149Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
150definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
151key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
152to look like this
153
154 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
155
156to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
157
158 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
159
160* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
161
162A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
163into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
164incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
165other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
166been filed.
167
168* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
169
170This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
1712.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
172event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
173Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
174
175A workaround for this is to add something like
176
177emacs.waitForWM: false
178
179to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
180frame's parameter list, like this:
181
182 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
183
184(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
185
186* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
187
188This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
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189Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
190neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
191problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
192`.emacs'.
193
194To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
195type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
196property.
61638355 197
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198* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
199click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
200is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
201problem disappears.
202
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203* There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
204XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
205one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
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206For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
207"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
208used with neXtaw at run time.
209
210The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
211want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
212built Emacs with.
ed0d1d91 213
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214* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
215
216This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
217a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
218--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
219
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220* Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
221
222This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
223terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
224If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
225version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
226and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
227
228All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
229problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
230terminfo when built.
231
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232* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
233
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234Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
235emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
236entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
237"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
238supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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239Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
240uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
241"colors".
242
243In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
244``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
245back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
246use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
247doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
248sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
249it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
250capability).
251
252Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
253attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
254incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
255this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 256
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257Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
258of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 259entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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260`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
261emulator.
ed85f61d 262
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263Beginning with version 21.3, Emacs supports the --color command-line
264option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
265modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
266for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
267
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268Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
269Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
270Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
271recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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272global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
273`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 274
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275* Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
276
277This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
278ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
279These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
280the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
281(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
282blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
283cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
284always blinks.
285
286A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
287enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
288the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
289cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
290the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
291cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
292
293To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
294`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
295the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
296produce a modified terminfo entry.
297
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298Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
299change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
300
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301* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
302
303The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
304emulation for which it is set up.
305
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306Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
307Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
308On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
309--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
310successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
311lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
312menu placement.
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313
314On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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315locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
316what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
317developers.
339b95d5 318
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319* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
320
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321Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images and the tool bar.
322Support for these will be added in future versions.
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324Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
325is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menu items is not
326displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
327synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
328waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
329pop-up menu interaction.
f936978f 330
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331There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
332mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
333frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
334after moving back into it.
b87207a0 335
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336Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
337not as severely as in 21.1.
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338
339Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
340characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
341
342An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
343Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
344
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345Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1). Some
346of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
347in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
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348characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
349work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
350you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
351the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
352ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
353appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
354yet.)
355
c24be289 356Multilingual text put into the Windows clipboard by other Windows
e085efdb 357applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
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358is because Windows uses Unicode to represent multilingual text, but
359Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
e085efdb 360means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
c24be289 361Windows programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
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362Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
363set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
364
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365* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
366
367This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
368libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
369install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
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370where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
371probably isn't limited to that system.
c8d9b4ee 372
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373You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
374and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
375which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
376which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
377generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
c8d9b4ee 378
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379(If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
380libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
c8d9b4ee 381
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382* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
383
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384This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
385(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
386(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
387configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
388files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
389left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
390itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
cbfe0252 391Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 392
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393In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
394machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
395(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
396This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
397
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398If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
399(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
400you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
401force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
402problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
403blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
404`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
405options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
406`/etc/auto.home'.
407
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408Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
409a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
410waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
411to work around the problem.
d9810886 412
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413Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
414onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
415you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
416`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
417
418 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
419
420The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
421
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422* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
423
424This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
425via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
426binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
427
428 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
429
430We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
431build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
432
9ed04369 433* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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434
435Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
436other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
437that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
438size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
439when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
440fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
441
442To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
443
444 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
445
446If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
447problem.
448
449The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
450`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
451`xset fp rehash'.
452
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453* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
454src/s/hpux10.h.
455
456* Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
457libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
458
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459* Font Lock displays portions of the bufefr in incorrect faces.
460
461By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
462`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
463any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
464vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
465parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
466in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
cbfe0252 467pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
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468introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
469through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
470to the end of a very large buffer.
471
472If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
473makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
474fontification by setting the variable
475`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
476be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
477
478Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
479in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
480
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481* When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
482or messed up.
483
cbfe0252 484For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
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485empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
486background.
487
488This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
489definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
490solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
491option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style.
492
493Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
494applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
495(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
496so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
497Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
498present or commented out:
499
500 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
501 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
502 Emacs*Foreground
503 Emacs*Background
504
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505* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
506
507Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
508MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
509port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
510keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
511of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
512
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513* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
514
515If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
516due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
517and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
518port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
519are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
520confuses ange-ftp.
521
522The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
523(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
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524Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
525directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
526variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
527client's executable. For example:
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528
529 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
530
531If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
532this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
533
534 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
535
536
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537* The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
538with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
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539fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
540work.
541
542Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
543If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
544CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
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545
546diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
547--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
548+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
549@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
550 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
551 (error nil))))
552 (t
553- (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
554+ ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
555+ (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
556 (condition-case ()
557 (progn
558 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
559diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
560--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
561+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
562@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
563+;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
564+;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
565+
566+(require 'w3-e19)
567+(provide 'w3-e21)
568
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569* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
570are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
571so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
572Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
573
cc2f2825 574* Compiling on AIX 4.3.x or 4.4 fails.
ec383c7d 575
9e2305c3 576This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
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577the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
578redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
579is to use the default compiler `cc'.
580
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581* The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
582`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
9ec9d3d2 583longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
1d297d9b 584
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585* Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
586
587As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
588characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
589etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
590different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
591which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
592encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
593text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
594into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
595buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
596
597To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
598
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599* Problems when using Emacs with UTF-8 locales
600
601Some systems, including recent versions of GNU/Linux, have terminals
602or X11 subsystems that can be configured to provide Unicode/UTF-8
603input and display. Normally, such a system sets environment variables
604such as LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL to a string which ends with a
605`.UTF-8'. For example, a system like this in a French locale might
606use `fr_FR.UTF-8' as the value of LANG.
607
608Since Unicode support in Emacs, as of v21.1, is not yet complete (see
609the previous entry in this file), UTF-8 support is not enabled by
610default, even in UTF-8 locales. Thus, some Emacs features, such as
611non-ASCII keyboard input, might appear to be broken in these locales.
612To solve these problems, you need to turn on some options in your
613`.emacs' file. Specifically, the following customizations should make
614Emacs work correctly with UTF-8 input and text:
615
616 (setq locale-coding-system 'utf-8)
617 (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
618 (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
619 (set-selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
620 (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
621
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622* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
623
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624This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
625slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
626e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
627Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
628correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 629
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630* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
631
632The error message might be something like this:
633
634 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
635
636This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
637built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
638for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
639corrects that.
640
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641* ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
642
643This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
644defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
645runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
646
647The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
648
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649* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
650from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
651shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
652These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
653library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
654
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655Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
656process invokes Emacs several times.
657
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658On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
659environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
660can be found.
661
662Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
663Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
664specified run-time search path in the executable.
665
666Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
667
0c6456ad 668* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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669C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
670compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
671release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
672another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
673and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 674
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675* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
676
677The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
678following message:
679
680 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
681
682To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
683INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
684functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
685
686 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
687 {
688 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
689 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
690
691Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
692with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
693
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694* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
695
696A typical error message might be something like
697
698 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
699
700This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
701Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
702are:
703
704 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
705
706 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
707 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
708 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
709
710One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
711fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
712the problematic line(s) and correct them.
713
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714* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
715
716The typical error message might be like this:
717
718 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
719
720This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
721tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
722files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
723Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
724when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
725required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
726its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
727
728Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
729file could fail to load if it is compressed.
730
731The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
732file.
733
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734Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
735lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
736print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
737
738 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
739
740If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
741and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
742load-path.
743
42303132
JR
744* Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
745
746An example of such an error is:
747
748 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
749
750This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your classpath.
751The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
752present in load-path:
753
754 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
755
756If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
757and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
758load-path.
759
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760* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
761
762If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
763representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
f2d176f2
CW
764ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
765version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
766systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
767ftp client. On a Debian system, type
f3d6f4ee 768
f2d176f2 769 update-alternatives --config ftp
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770
771and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
772
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773* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
774
775The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
776work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
777was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
778work when an antivirus package is installed.
779
780The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
781mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
782or disable it entirely.
783
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JR
784* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
785
786This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
787when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
788cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
cbfe0252 789http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
f29d1e75 790
c24be289
JR
791* Windows 95/98/ME crashes when trying to run non-existant subprocesses.
792
793When a subprocess you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
794Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
795particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a java
796program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
797path.
798
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799* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
800mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
801exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
802seen.
803
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804* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
805
806This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
807Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
808modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
809keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
810modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
811was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
812Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
813
814The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
815modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
816and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
817which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
818the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
819modifier:
820
821 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
822
823A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
824is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
825
826 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
827
828This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
829keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
830keys can serve as Meta.
831
832The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
833keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
834
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835* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
836remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
837keyboard(5).
838
839Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
840% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
841% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
842
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843* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
844
845Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
846It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
847system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
848the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
849
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850* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
851
852This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
853and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
854manager.
855
856This bug was reported to Sun as
857
858 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
859 Bug Reports: 4463537
860
2aa82bcf 861Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
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862reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
863library xiiimp.so.
864
865Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
866the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
867can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
868
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869* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
870
871This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
872assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
873To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
874or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
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875Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
876
877* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
878
879Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
880
881 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
882 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
883 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
884 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
885 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
886 /******************************************************************
887
888 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
889 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
890 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
891 XLCd lcd;
892 {
893 - char* begin;
894 - char* end;
895 + char* begin = NULL;
896 + char* end = NULL;
897 char* ret;
898 int i = 0;
899 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
900 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
901 }
902 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
903 if (ret != NULL) {
904 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
905 + if (begin != NULL) {
906 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
907 + } else {
908 + ret[0] = '\0';
909 + }
910 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
911 }
912 return ret;
913
914
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915* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
916
917This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
918
919* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
920
921This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
922It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
923
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924* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
925
926This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
927combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
928definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
929might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
930purposes.
931
932We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
933you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
934
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935* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
936the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
937
938You can fix this by editing the file:
939
940 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
941
942Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
943
944 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
945
946that should read:
947
948 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
949
950Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
951
952* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
953 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
954
955This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
956Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
957
958* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
959
960Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
961problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
962documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
963
964* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
965
966These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
967particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
968configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
969configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
970change this.
971
972* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
973
974When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
975(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
976then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
977correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
978gives the appearance of "double spacing".
979
980To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
981feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
982
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983* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
984
985This problem manifests itself as an error message
986
987 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
988
989The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
990were built for an older system version,
991
992 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
993
994made the problem go away.
995
996* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
997
998This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
999as of 8 Dec 1998.
1000
1001The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1002
1003* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1004the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1005next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1006
1007* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1008
1009This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1010a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1011likely to cause it.
1012
1013We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1014
1015* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1016
1017This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1018
1019* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1020
1021This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1022
1023* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1024Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1025`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1026'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1027
1028* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1029(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1030Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1031earlier versions.
1032
1033--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1034+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1035@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1036 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1037 (cond
1038 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1039- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1040+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1041 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1042 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1043 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1044
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1045* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1046
1047Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1048these problems.
1049
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1050* No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
1051
1052Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
1053byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
1054
d238f982 1055* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
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DL
1056about a read-only tex output buffer.
1057
1058This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1059versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1060package.
1061
1062diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1063*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1064--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1065***************
1066*** 545,551 ****
1067 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1068 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1069 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1070! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1071 (set-buffer buffer)
1072 (if dir (cd dir))
1073 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1074- --- 545,552 ----
1075 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1076 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1077 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1078! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1079! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1080 (set-buffer buffer)
1081 (if dir (cd dir))
1082 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1083
1084* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1085in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1086
1087 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1088
1089This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1090003082 August 11, 1998.
1091
1092* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1093
1094The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1095 (standard-display-european t)
1096That should be changed to
1097 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1098
1099* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1100
1101You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1102supplies the `install-info' command.
1103
1104* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1105
1106To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1107rights, containing this text:
1108
1109--------------------------------
1110xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1111keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1112keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1113EOF
1114
1115xmodmap - << EOF
1116clear mod1
1117keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1118add mod1 = Meta_L
1119keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1120add mod2 = Mode_switch
1121EOF
1122--------------------------------
1123
17a37d87
EZ
1124* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1125
62c485d2
GM
1126This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1127requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1128of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1129which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1130while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1131
1132 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1133
62c485d2 1134A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1135
a933dad1
DL
1136* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1137in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1138drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1139
1140This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1141device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1142work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1143
1144* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1145
1146See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1147for character composition.
1148
1149* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1150
1151This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1152full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1153/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1154
1155127.0.0.1 localhost
1156129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1157
1158The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1159
1160* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1161
1162So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1163is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1164properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1165`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1166in Emacs.
1167
1168* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1169
3d00585e
EZ
1170This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1171characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1172characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1173support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1174
3d00585e
EZ
1175To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1176this at your shell's prompt:
1177
1178 ispell -vv
1179
1180and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1181"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1182does not.
1183
1184To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1185in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1186Then rebuild the speller.
1187
1188Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1189version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1190
1191Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1192in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1193Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1194it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1195spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
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1196
1197* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
11985.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1199
1200This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1201One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1202known to work.
1203
1204* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1205CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1206
1207This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1208
1209Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1210events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1211distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1212combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
c24be289
JR
1213AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
1214to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
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1215
1216* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1217
1218The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1219screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1220display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1221to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1222
1223This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1224well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1225
1226There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1227running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1228un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1229selection".
1230
1231Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1232please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1233If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1234here.
1235
1236* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1237
1238The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1239Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1240(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1241You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1242You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1243look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1244are currently recommended for your host.
1245
1246On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1247105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1248105284-18 might fix it again.
1249
3156909f
PE
1250* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1251
1252This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1253the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1254support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1255If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
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1256
1257One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1258For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1259variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1260lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1261should do.
1262
3156909f
PE
1263pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1264if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1265libraries.
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1266
1267* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1268
1269You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1270either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1271calls for specifying this.
1272
1273If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1274mail-host-address to the value you want.
1275
1276* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1277
1278Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1279virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1280the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1281error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1282exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1283memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1284
1285You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1286But you have to be root to do it.
1287
1288According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1289
1290 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1291 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1292 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1293 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1294 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1295
1296(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1297These changes take effect when you reboot.
1298
1299* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1300
1301We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1302scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1303happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1304on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1305
1306Here's how to do this:
1307
1308 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1309
1310If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1311try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1312to normal, do
1313
1314 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1315
1316* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1317
1318Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1319supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1320many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1321
1322If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1323server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1324You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1325
1326The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1327display all the characters Emacs supports.
1328
4c635a29
DL
1329Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1330missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1331character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1332but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1333of this character to display a space.
1334
a933dad1
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1335* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1336
1337You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1338
1339* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1340
1341This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1342than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1343lines do not overlap.
1344
1345* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1346video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1347
1348This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1349your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1350check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1351
1352* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1353directories that have the +t bit.
1354
1355This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1356Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1357with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1358link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1359
1360If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1361file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1362
1363* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1364commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1365
1366You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1367
1368 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1369
1370* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1371appear on disk.
1372
1373This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1374remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1375implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1376detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1377calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1378where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1379
1380* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1381
1382If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1383will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1384in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1385did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1386character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1387must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1388
1389You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1390them to two different keys.
1391
1392* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1393
1394If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1395without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1396
1397* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1398
1399Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1400NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1401entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1402listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1403the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1404old POP protocol.
1405
1406* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1407
1408This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1409use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1410an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1411happens to exist on your X server).
1412
1413* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1414
1415This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1416prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1417to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1418
1419Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1420(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1421
1422* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1423
1424We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1425the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1426does not happen.
1427
1428* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1429
1430We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1431Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1432makes the problem stop:
1433
1434105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1435105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1436106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1437105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1438
1439Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1440suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1441
1442106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1443106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1444105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1445
1446* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1447
1448`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1449The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1450
1451The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1452"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1453with the user.
1454
1455On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1456pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1457communicate with the subprocess.
1458
1459On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1460relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1461redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1462stdin.
1463
1464A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1465
1466For Perl 4:
1467
1468 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1469 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1470 ***************
1471 *** 68,74 ****
1472 $rcfile=".perldb";
1473 }
1474 else {
1475 ! $console = "con";
1476 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1477 }
1478
1479 --- 68,74 ----
1480 $rcfile=".perldb";
1481 }
1482 else {
1483 ! $console = "";
1484 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1485 }
1486
1487
1488 For Perl 5:
1489 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1490 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1491 ***************
1492 *** 22,28 ****
1493 $rcfile=".perldb";
1494 }
1495 elsif (-e "con") {
1496 ! $console = "con";
1497 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1498 }
1499 else {
1500 --- 22,28 ----
1501 $rcfile=".perldb";
1502 }
1503 elsif (-e "con") {
1504 ! $console = "";
1505 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1506 }
1507 else {
1508
a933dad1
DL
1509* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1510
1511There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1512
1513 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1514 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1515 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1516
1517To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1518subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1519them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1520incorrect library functions.
1521
f1e54ce1
EZ
1522* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1523
1524If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1525Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1526program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1527config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1528the front of your PATH environment variable.
1529
a933dad1
DL
1530* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1531like make-docfile.
1532
1533This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1534variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1535compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1536the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1537
1538* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1539run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a01325b8
EZ
1540
1541Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
a933dad1
DL
1542immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1543the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
a01325b8
EZ
1544and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1545
1546Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1547the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1548Lisp.
a933dad1
DL
1549
1550This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1551support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1552characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1553You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1554filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1555compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1556explains this issue in more detail.
1557
a01325b8
EZ
1558Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1559MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1560by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1561unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1562them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1563must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1564properly truncated.
1565
a933dad1
DL
1566* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1567
1568 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1569
1570This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1571on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1572value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1573works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1574support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1575undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1576[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1577`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1578your system works as before.
1579
1580* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1581
1582This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1583You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1584
c24be289 1585* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows.
a933dad1
DL
1586
1587This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1588you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
c24be289
JR
1589and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
1590more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
1591or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
a933dad1
DL
1592
1593* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1594
1595This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1596version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1597definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1598incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1599does not work with this version of ncurses.
1600
1601The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1602
1603* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1604
1605Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1606editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1607as GCC.
1608
1609* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1610on GNU/Linux systems.
1611
1612This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
16131.3.75.
1614
1615* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1616
1617There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1618caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1619problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1620is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1621
1622Using the old library version is a workaround.
1623
1624* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1625
1626This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1627version of Solaris that you are using.
1628
1629* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1630
1631Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1632102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1633Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1634by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1635However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1636
1637Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1638you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1639We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1640for certain.
1641
1642 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1643 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1644 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1645
1646(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1647with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1648
1649If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1650bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1651
1652Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1653Solaris 2.5.
1654
1655* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1656
1657If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1658of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1659called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1660
1661* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1662Emacs built with Motif.
1663
1664This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1665such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1666
1667* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1668
1669A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1670in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1671find that string, and take out the spaces.
1672
1673Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1674
1675* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1676
1677This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1678many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1679swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1680can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1681command `swap -l'.
1682
1683You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1684line like this:
1685
1686/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1687
1688where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1689by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1690that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1691new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1692information.
1693
1694The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1695swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1696on the network that can log on to the host.
1697
1698If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1699the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1700some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1701icons.
1702
1703You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1704FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1705("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1706ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1707
1708* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1709character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1710
1711One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1712away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1713XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1714
1715* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1716
1717This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1718on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1719version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1720it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1721
1722* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1723(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1724
1725Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1726
1727* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1728with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1729
1730On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1731`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1732Definitions" to make them defined.
1733
1734* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1735 ld: Undefined symbol
1736 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1737 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1738
1739The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1740or link libXmu statically.
1741
1742* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1743 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1744 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1745
1746This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1747these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1748you build Emacs:
1749
1750 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1751 chmod 664 libIM.a
1752 ranlib libIM.a
1753
1754Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1755Makefile).
1756
1757* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1758
1759A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1760the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1761
1762We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1763
1764* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1765Windows.
1766
1767A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1768Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1769problem.
1770
1771* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1772
1773Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1774and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1775know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1776memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1777However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1778
1779You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1780arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1781information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1782is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1783
1784Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1785configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1786removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1787and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1788the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1789
1790* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1791
1792twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1793You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1794
1795 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1796
1797* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1798
1799This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1800the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1801Emacs's configure script.
1802
1803* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1804
1805This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1806problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1807configure script.
1808
1809* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1810
1811If you get errors such as
1812
1813 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1814 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1815 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1816
1817This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1818to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1819script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1820make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1821ones available when you build Emacs.
1822
1823* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1824other non-English HP keyboards too).
1825
1826This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1827shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1828configures the X server.
1829
1830 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1831 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1832 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1833 EOF
1834
1835 xmodmap - << EOF
1836 clear mod1
1837 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1838 add mod1 = Meta_L
1839 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1840 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1841 EOF
1842
1843* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1844
1845Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1846command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1847Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1848manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1849shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1850
1851 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1852
1853* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1854
1855There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1856that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1857
1858* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1859
1860The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1861be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1862to allocate ptys reliably.
1863
1864* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1865
1866The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1867Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1868compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1869workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1870syms.h.
1871
1872* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1873
1874People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1875startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1876
1877This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1878Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1879improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1880networked and non-networked machines.
1881
1882Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1883
1884** Networked Case
1885
1886First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1887exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1888(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1889
1890 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1891
1892Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1893lines:
1894
1895 order hosts, bind
1896 multi on
1897
1898Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1899indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1900database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1901dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1902
1903** Non-Networked Case
1904
1905The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1906However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1907simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1908`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1909file is not necessary with this approach.
1910
1911* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1912forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1913
1914casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1915after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1916
1917 #if ThreadedX
1918 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1919 #endif
1920
1921to:
1922
1923 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1924 #if ThreadedX
1925 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1926 #endif
1927 #endif
1928
1929Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1930(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1931OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1932Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1933definition for your type of machine and system.
1934
1935Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1936the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1937Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1938
1939For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1940101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1941to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1942patch.
1943
1944However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1945he changed
1946 #define ThreadedX YES
1947to
1948 #define ThreadedX NO
1949in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1950`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1951typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1952
1953* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1954 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1955
1956This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1957with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1958another escape character in kermit. One user did
1959
1960 set escape-character 17
1961
1962in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1963
1964* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1965
1966This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1967
1968 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1969
1970That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1971do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1972explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1973the resource prevents the problem.
1974
1975* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1976
1977We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1978one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1979
1980100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1981100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1982100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1983100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1984100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1985
1986We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1987which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1988
1989* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1990
1991This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1992installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1993specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1994corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1995the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1996Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1997files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1998original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1999not to work.
2000
2001The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2002when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2003is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2004same directory where system header files are kept.
2005
2006* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2007
2008This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2009are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2010does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2011later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2012described in the Solaris FAQ
2013<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2014to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2015
2016* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2017
2018This shell command should fix it:
2019
2020 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2021
2022* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2023
2024On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2025with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2026version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2027C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2028GCC.
2029
2030* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2031
2032This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2033for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2034/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2035
2036* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2037
2038On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2039works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2040bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2041the Files menu).
2042
2043This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2044due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2045knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2046workaround can be found.
2047
2048* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2049
2050The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2051that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2052fonts, so it does not work.
2053
2054This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2055the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2056emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2057that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2058resources affect Emacs also:
2059
2060 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2061 *Background: scoBackground
2062 *Foreground: scoForeground
2063
2064The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2065Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2066
2067 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2068 Emacs*Background: white
2069 Emacs*Foreground: black
2070
2071(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2072suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2073starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2074environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2075as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2076/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2077but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2078Open Desktop display.
2079
2080These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2081machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2082
2083* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2084
2085This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2086The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2087
2088* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2089
2090This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2091doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2092because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2093libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2094those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2095install them and rebuild Emacs.
2096
2097* Loading fonts is very slow.
2098
2099You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2100Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2101directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2102"fonts.scale".
2103
2104If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2105font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2106
2107With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2108directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2109Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2110
2111* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2112
2113Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2114ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2115lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2116treated as control characters.
2117
2118You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2119releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2120
2121* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2122
2123Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2124versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2125cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2126This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2127processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2128
2129Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2130the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2131
2132The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2133
2134* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2135
2136This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2137C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2138
2139* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2140 segmentation fault and core dump.
2141
2142This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2143added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2144
2145 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2146
2147If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2148untar it :-).
2149
2150* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2151
2152To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2153
2154 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2155
2156and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2157
2158The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2159cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2160
2161* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2162
2163There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2164the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2165workaround/fix is:
2166
2167 cd /lib
2168 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2169 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2170
2171* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2172
2173If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2174with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2175the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2176libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2177toolkit.)
2178
2179If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2180lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2181X11R4, then use it in the link.
2182
2183* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2184
2185This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2186Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2187Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2188where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2189
2190So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2191
2192* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2193
2194This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2195smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2196on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2197problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2198
2199 if ($?EMACS) then
2200 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2201 unset edit
2202 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2203 endif
2204 endif
2205
2206* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2207parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2208
2209This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2210 emacs*Cursor: black
2211(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2212that isn't a color.)
2213
2214The fix is to correct your X resources.
2215
2216* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2217
2218If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2219_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2220-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2221
2222This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2223extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2224
2225* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2226
2227This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2228to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2229Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2230
2231* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2232
2233This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2234had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2235
2236* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2237
2238If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2239resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2240renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2241font.
2242
2243One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2244your font path, like this:
2245
2246 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2247
2248* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2249
2250An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2251
2252 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2253
2254This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2255individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2256want, rewrite the resource.
2257
2258To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2259-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2260the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2261
2262* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2263
2264On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2265unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2266toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2267libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2268unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2269and Solaris in version 19.29.
2270
2271* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2272
2273This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2274commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2275Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2276hand.
2277
2278* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2279
2280This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2281The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2282such as bash.
2283
2284* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2285
2286A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2287exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2288applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2289communicating through pipes.
2290
2291* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2292
2293Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2294sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2295delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2296program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2297means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2298command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2299obtain the destination address.
2300
2301There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2302In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2303non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
23042.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
23054.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2306have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2307of this writing, these official versions are available:
2308
2309 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2310 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2311 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2312 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2313 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2314
2315 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2316 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2317
2318* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2319
2320 Could not load program emacs
2321 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2322 Error was: Exec format error
2323
2324or this one:
2325
2326 Could not load program .emacs
2327 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2328 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2329 Error was: Exec format error
2330
2331These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2332compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2333
2334* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2335
2336 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2337 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2338
2339This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2340libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2341X11Dev... with smit.
2342
2343* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2344
2345This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2346Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2347character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2348to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2349
2350For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2351
2352 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2353
2354If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2355Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2356xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2357
2358* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2359
2360You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2361though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2362or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2363
2364* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2365
2366These control the actions of Emacs.
2367~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2368EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2369"load" will search.
2370
2371If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2372of them, then try again.
2373
2374* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2375
2376Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2377mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2378the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2379
2380Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2381you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2382operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2383configure script) that reads:
2384#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2385This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2386the kernel bug.
2387
2388* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2389directly with an X server.
2390
2391If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2392does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2393whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2394followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2395it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2396have made the key binding correctly.
2397
2398If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2399be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2400server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2401default.
2402
2403If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2404
2405 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2406 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2407
2408If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2409commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2410are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2411modifier bit not otherwise used.
2412
2413If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2414keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2415some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2416commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2417
2418Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2419into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2420
2421* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2422
2423On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2424file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2425does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2426value is just ten seconds.
2427
2428If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2429
2430* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2431
2432On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2433in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2434expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2435in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2436
2437The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2438anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2439
2440I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2441going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2442Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2443in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2444
2445* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2446
2447Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2448the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2449sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2450
2451* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2452
2453Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2454
2455* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2456the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2457* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2458* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2459
2460This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2461libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2462shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2463similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2464
2465The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2466the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2467
2468The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2469installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2470
2471On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2472
2473If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2474then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2475do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2476or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2477that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2478be careful not to lose the others.
2479
2480Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2481
2482#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2483
2484Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2485the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2486again to say this:
2487
2488#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2489
2490* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2491
2492 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2493
2494The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2495
2496The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2497
2498* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2499
2500This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2501with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2502corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2503
2504* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2505
2506People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2507Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2508
2509* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2510
2511christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2512
2513The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2514execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2515tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2516but tty is giving it back 3.
2517
2518The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2519word:
2520
2521if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2522
2523should be changed to:
2524
2525if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2526
2527Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2528and into .login.
2529
2530* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2531
2532Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2533
2534* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2535* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2536
2537One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2538your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2539the environment.
2540
2541* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2542
2543If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2544`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2545that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2546with a floating point option other than the default.
2547
2548It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2549crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2550However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2551floating point option: -fsoft.
2552
2553* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2554
2555The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2556arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2557tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2558
2559I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2560whether this problem is present on a given system.
2561
2562* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2563 as a concentrator.
2564
2565This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
25667 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2567
2568* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2569
2570This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2571version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2572
2573* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2574 terminal type.
2575
2576The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2577environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2578provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2579emulates.
2580
2581Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2582in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2583it only if it is undefined.
2584
2585 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2586
2587Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2588happen in a non-login shell.
2589
2590* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2591
2592People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2593not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2594the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2595the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2596
2597You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2598However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2599you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2600
2601The easy way to do this is to put
2602
2603 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2604
2605in your site-init.el file.
2606
2607* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2608
2609On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2610may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2611is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2612As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2613
2614* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2615
2616You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2617
2618 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2619
2620This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2621Here is how to make more of them.
2622
2623 % cd /dev
2624 % ls pty*
2625 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2626 % /etc/crpty 8
2627 # creates eight new pty's
2628
2629* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2630
2631This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2632Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2633
2634It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2635space available on the machine.
2636
2637On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2638subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2639for large blocks (many pages).
2640
2641* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2642* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2643* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2644* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2645
2646This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2647fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2648binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2649
2650In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2651It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2652a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2653itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2654when unpacking the shell archive.
2655
2656I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2657what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2658file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2659
2660If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2661nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2662
2663 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2664 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2665 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2666 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2667 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2668 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2669 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2670 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2671 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2672 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2673 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2674 and remake temacs.
2675 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2676
2677* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2678
2679This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2680files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2681space than was allocated.
2682
2683This could be caused by
2684 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2685 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2686 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2687 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2688 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2689 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2690 deleting that file.
2691 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2692 (not from the directory you expected).
2693 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2694 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2695 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2696 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2697 the space required.
2698
2699If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2700of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2701
2702But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2703of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2704problem.
2705
2706* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2707
2708You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2709Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2710will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2711and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2712
2713Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2714than the corresponding .el file.
2715
2716* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2717
2718Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2719
27201) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2721as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2722it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2723value in the man page for a.out (5).
2724
27252) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2726initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2727of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2728not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2729may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2730
2731* Compilation errors on VMS.
2732
2733You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2734variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2735This is not an error. Ignore it.
2736
2737VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2738were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2739
2740There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2741in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2742 char c = -1, d = 1;
2743 int i;
2744
2745 i = d ? c : d;
2746The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2747conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2748constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2749
2750* rmail gets error getting new mail
2751
2752rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2753called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2754the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2755
2756There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2757the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2758`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2759this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2760the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2761IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2762SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2763
2764If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2765prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2766you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2767`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2768
2769 chgrp mail movemail
2770 chmod 2755 movemail
2771
2772If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2773prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2774you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2775`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2776make install.
2777
2778 chgrp mail movemail
2779 chmod 2755 movemail
2780
2781Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2782installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2783installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2784/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2785mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2786directory copy is ineffective.
2787
2788* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2789
2790This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2791used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2792away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2793streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2794user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2795properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2796input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2797easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2798
2799There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2800
2801 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2802 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2803 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2804
2805First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2806they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2807"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2808escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2809and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2810control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2811
2812Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2813needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2814by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2815rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2816your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2817it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2818the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2819problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2820to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2821
2822For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2823giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2824codes. You might as well try it.
2825
2826If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2827through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2828computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2829much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2830control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2831you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2832replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2833measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2834
2835You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2836handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2837enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2838now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2839enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2840control handling.)
2841
2842If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2843is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2844other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2845and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2846other control characters are already used by emacs.
2847
2848IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2849Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2850order to continue.
2851
2852If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2853certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2854`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2855automatically. Here is an example:
2856
2857(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2858
2859If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2860and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2861manually.
2862
2863I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2864assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2865control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2866merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2867widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2868use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2869will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2870of inferior systems.
2871
2872* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2873
2874For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2875control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2876terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2877that wants to use flow control.
2878
2879You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2880If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2881flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2882
2883If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2884into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2885shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2886
2887* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2888
2889Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2890control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2891On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2892control on the local system.
2893
2894One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2895(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2896stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2897"stty start u stop u" will do this.
2898
2899Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2900around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2901issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2902
2903If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2904M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2905if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2906following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2907
2908(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2909
2910See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2911info.
2912
2913* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2914
2915This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2916terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2917the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2918
2919The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2920Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2921(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2922terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2923what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2924and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2925There are several possibilities:
2926
29271) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2928
2929In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2930need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2931
29322) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2933 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2934 by termcap.
2935
2936This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2937Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2938and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2939classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2940Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2941tested on many kinds of terminals.
2942
29433) The termcap entry is wrong.
2944
2945See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2946that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2947for certain terminals.
2948
29494) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2950 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2951
2952This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2953in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2954
2955* Output from Control-V is slow.
2956
2957On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2958Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2959to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2960before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2961the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2962it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2963
2964If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2965that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2966specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2967concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2968send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2969fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2970time as the operations really take.
2971
2972Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2973at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2974terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2975operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2976flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2977an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2978Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2979cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2980not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2981is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2982
2983Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2984multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2985termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2986fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2987each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2988to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2989`cm' string.
2990
2991You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2992has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2993take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2994
2995A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2996of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2997
2998* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2999
3000The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3001
3002 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3003 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3004
3005This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3006
3007* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3008
3009Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3010after a day or two.
3011
3012The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3013the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3014character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3015of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3016overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3017to it.
3018
3019For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3020and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3021other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3022but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3023that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3024important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3025
3026If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3027you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3028 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3029You can probably access help-command via f1.
3030
3031* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3032It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3033but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3034causes it.
3035
3036 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3037 call in the RFS server.
3038
3039 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3040 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3041 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3042 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3043
3044 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3045
3046 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3047 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3048 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3049 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3050 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3051 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3052 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3053
3054 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3055
3056 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3057 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3058 retrieving revision 1.2
3059 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3060 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3061 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3062 ***************
3063 *** 163,169 ****
3064 /*
3065 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3066 */
3067 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3068 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3069 else
3070 {
3071 --- 166,172 ----
3072 /*
3073 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3074 */
3075 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3076 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3077 else
3078 {
3079
3080* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3081
3082You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3083
3084 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3085 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3086
3087These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3088Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3089may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3090on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3091in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3092can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3093that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3094
3095As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3096you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3097can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3098should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3099array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3100 Lisp_Object *args;
3101 ...
3102 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3103putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3104 Lisp_Object *args;
3105 Lisp_Object tem;
3106 ...
3107 tem = args[i];
3108 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3109causes the problem to go away.
3110The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3111so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3112
3113* 68000 C compiler problems
3114
3115Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3116These are some that have been observed.
3117
3118** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3119This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3120if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3121
3122** "cannot reclaim" error.
3123
3124This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3125line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3126simpler expressions.
3127
3128** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3129
3130If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3131Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3132
3133struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3134
3135lose (arg)
3136 struct foo arg;
3137{
3138 test ((int *) arg.y);
3139}
3140
3141If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3142In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3143((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3144
3145This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3146of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3147
3148* C compilers lose on returning unions
3149
3150I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3151Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3152defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3153
3154This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3155of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3156
53854552
EZ
3157\f
3158Local variables:
3159mode: outline
3160paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3161end: