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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* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
5
6This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
7An example is the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1. To
8circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to
9nil in your .emacs.
10
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11* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
12
13This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
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14of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
15version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
16dates. The preprocessor in those versions expands ".." into ". .",
17which breaks relative file names that reference the parent directory.
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18
19The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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20`-traditional' option. (The `configure' script does that
21automatically.)
6b22660f 22
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23Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
24Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefile's.
25
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26* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
27
28Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
29version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
30necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
31__MSVCRT__, like so:
32
33 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
34
35* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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36
37The error message might be something like this:
38
39 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
40 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
41 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
42 '0xffffffff'
43 Stop.
44
45This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
46which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
47`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
48endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
49or EOL conversions.
50
51The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
52change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
53in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
54which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
55mangling them.
56
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57* JPEG images aren't displayed.
58
59This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
60Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
61
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62* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
63
64This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
65defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
66patch to assert.h should solve this:
67
68*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
69--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
70***************
71*** 41,47 ****
72 /*
73 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
74 */
75! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
76
77 #else /* debugging enabled */
78
79--- 41,47 ----
80 /*
81 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
82 */
83! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
84
85 #else /* debugging enabled */
86
87
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88* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
89click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
90is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
91problem disappears.
92
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93* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
94
95This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
96a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
97--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
98
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99* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
100
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101Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
102emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
103entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
104"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
105supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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106Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
107uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
108"colors".
109
110In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
111``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
112back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
113use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
114doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
115sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
116it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
117capability).
118
119Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
120attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
121incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
122this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 123
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124Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
125of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 126entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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127`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
128emulator.
ed85f61d 129
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130Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
131Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
132Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
133recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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134global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
135`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 136
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137* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
138
139The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
140emulation for which it is set up.
141
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142Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
143Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
144On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
145--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
146successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
147lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
148menu placement.
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149
150On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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151locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
152what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
153developers.
339b95d5 154
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155* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
156
157Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
158and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
159
160There are problems with display if the variable `redisplay-dont-pause'
161is set to nil (w32-win.el sets it to t by default, to avoid these
162problems). The problems include:
163
164 . No redisplay as long as help echo is displayed in the echo area,
165 e.g. if the mouse is on a mouse-sensitive part of the mode line.
166
49e37720 167 . When the mode line is dragged with the mouse, multiple copies of the
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168 mode line are left behind, until the mouse button is released and
169 the next input event occurs.
170
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171 . Window contents are not updated when text is selected by dragging
172 the mouse, and the mouse is dragged below the bottom line of the
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173 window. When the mouse button is released, the window display is
174 correctly updated.
175
176Again, these problems only occur if `redisplay-dont-pause' is nil.
177
178Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
179characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
180
181An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
182Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
183
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184Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
185These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
186the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
187characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
188work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
189you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
190the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
191ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
192appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
193yet.)
194
195Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
196applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
197is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
198but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
199means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
200Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
201Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
202set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
203
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204* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
205
206This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
207libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
208install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
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209where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
210probably isn't limited to that system.
c8d9b4ee 211
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212You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
213and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
214which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
215which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
216generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
c8d9b4ee 217
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218(If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
219libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
c8d9b4ee 220
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221* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
222
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223This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
224(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
225(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
226configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
227files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
228left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
229itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
230Emacs excutable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 231
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232In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
233machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
234(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
235This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
236
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237If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
238(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
239you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
240force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
241problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
242blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
243`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
244options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
245`/etc/auto.home'.
246
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247Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
248a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
249waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
250to work around the problem.
d9810886 251
9ed04369 252* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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253
254Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
255other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
256that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
257size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
258when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
259fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
260
261To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
262
263 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
264
265If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
266problem.
267
268The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
269`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
270`xset fp rehash'.
271
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272* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
273src/s/hpux10.h.
274
275* Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
276libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
277
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278* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
279
280Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
281MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
282port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
283keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
284of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
285
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286* The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
287with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
288fixed in W3's CVS. This patch is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46 work:
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289
290diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
291--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
292+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
293@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
294 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
295 (error nil))))
296 (t
297- (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
298+ ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
299+ (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
300 (condition-case ()
301 (progn
302 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
303diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
304--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
305+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
306@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
307+;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
308+;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
309+
310+(require 'w3-e19)
311+(provide 'w3-e21)
312
eccd9c9b 313
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314* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
315are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
316so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
317Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
318
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319* The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
320`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
49e37720 321longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.2 fix that.
e1f9a6b3 322
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323--- psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:23:31 1.1
324+++ psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:24:22
325@@ -264,4 +264,4 @@
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326 ; inhibit-read-only
327- (before-change-function nil)
328- (after-change-function nil))
329+ (before-change-functions nil)
330+ (after-change-functions nil))
331 (setq selective-display t)
49e37720 332@@ -1544,3 +1544,3 @@
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333 (buffer-read-only nil)
334- (before-change-function nil)
335+ (before-change-functions nil)
336 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
49e37720 337@@ -1596,3 +1596,3 @@
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338 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
339- (let (before-change-function
340+ (let (before-change-functions
341 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
49e37720 342@@ -1613,3 +1613,3 @@
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343 (re-found nil)
344- before-change-function)
345+ before-change-functions)
346 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
49e37720 347@@ -1646,3 +1646,3 @@
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348 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
349- (let ((before-change-function nil))
350+ (let ((before-change-functions nil))
351 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
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352--- psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:23:42 1.1
353+++ psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:30:05
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354@@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
355 (require 'easymenu)
356+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
357
358@@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
359 (let ((submenu
360- (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
361- sgml-max-menu-size))))
362+;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
363+;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
364+ (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
365+ (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
366+ sgml-max-menu-size))
367+ new) nil)
368+ new)))
369 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
49e37720 370@@ -113,9 +119,10 @@
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371 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
372- (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
373- (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
374 (after-change-functions nil)
375- (before-change-functions nil))
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376+ (before-change-functions nil)
377+ (modified (buffer-modified-p))
378+ (buffer-undo-list t)
379+ deactivate-mark)
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380 (put-text-property start end 'face face)
381- (when (< start end)
382- (put-text-property (1- end) end 'rear-nonsticky '(face)))))
e1f9a6b3 383+ (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
49e37720 384+ (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
e1f9a6b3 385 (t
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386--- psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:23:57 1.1
387+++ psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:29:56
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388@@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
389
390+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
391+
392 \f
49e37720 393@@ -2493,8 +2495,8 @@
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394 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
395- (when after-change-function ;***
396- (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
397+ (when after-change-functions ;***
398+ (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
399 (current-buffer)
400- after-change-function)
401- (setq before-change-function nil
402- after-change-function nil))
403+ after-change-functions)
404+ (setq before-change-functions nil
405+ after-change-functions nil))
406 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
49e37720 407@@ -2878,6 +2880,5 @@
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408 "Set initial state of parsing"
409- (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
410- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
411- (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
412- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
413+ (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
414+ (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
415+ '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
416 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
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417@@ -3925,7 +3926,7 @@
418 (sgml-need-dtd)
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419- (unless before-change-function
420- (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
421+ (unless before-change-functions
422+ (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
423 (current-buffer))
424- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
49e37720 425- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change))
e1f9a6b3 426+ (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
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427+ (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change)))
428 (sgml-with-parser-syntax-ro
e1f9a6b3 429
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430* The Calc package fails to build and signals errors with Emacs 21.
431
432Apply the following patches which reportedly fix several problems:
433
434--- calc-ext.el.~1~ Sun Apr 3 02:26:34 1994
435+++ calc-ext.el Wed Sep 18 17:35:01 1996
436@@ -1354,6 +1354,25 @@
437 (calc-fancy-prefix 'calc-inverse-flag "Inverse..." n)
438 )
439
440+(defconst calc-fancy-prefix-map
441+ (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
442+ (define-key map [t] 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
443+ (define-key map (vector meta-prefix-char t) 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
444+ (define-key map [switch-frame] nil)
445+ (define-key map [?\C-u] 'universal-argument)
446+ (define-key map [?0] 'digit-argument)
447+ (define-key map [?1] 'digit-argument)
448+ (define-key map [?2] 'digit-argument)
449+ (define-key map [?3] 'digit-argument)
450+ (define-key map [?4] 'digit-argument)
451+ (define-key map [?5] 'digit-argument)
452+ (define-key map [?6] 'digit-argument)
453+ (define-key map [?7] 'digit-argument)
454+ (define-key map [?8] 'digit-argument)
455+ (define-key map [?9] 'digit-argument)
456+ map)
457+ "Keymap used while processing calc-fancy-prefix.")
458+
459 (defun calc-fancy-prefix (flag msg n)
460 (let (prefix)
461 (calc-wrapper
462@@ -1364,6 +1383,8 @@
463 (message (if prefix msg "")))
464 (and prefix
465 (not calc-is-keypad-press)
466+ (if (boundp 'overriding-terminal-local-map)
467+ (setq overriding-terminal-local-map calc-fancy-prefix-map)
468 (let ((event (calc-read-key t)))
469 (if (eq (setq last-command-char (car event)) ?\C-u)
470 (universal-argument)
471@@ -1376,9 +1397,18 @@
472 (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
473 (eq last-command-char ?-))
474 (calc-unread-command)
475- (digit-argument n))))))
476+ (digit-argument n)))))))
477 )
478 (setq calc-is-keypad-press nil)
479+
480+(defun calc-fancy-prefix-other-key (arg)
481+ (interactive "P")
482+ (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
483+ (and (>= last-command-char 0) (< last-command-char ? )
484+ (not (eq last-command-char meta-prefix-char))))
485+ (calc-wrapper)) ; clear flags if not a Calc command.
486+ (calc-unread-command)
487+ (setq overriding-terminal-local-map nil))
488
489 (defun calc-invert-func ()
490 (save-excursion
491
492--- Makefile.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:45 1996
493+++ Makefile Thu Nov 30 15:09:45 2000
494@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
495
496 # Other macros.
497 EFLAGS = -batch
498-MAINT = -l calc-maint.elc
499+MAINT = -l calc-maint.el
500
501 # Control whether intermediate files are kept.
502 PURGE = -rm -f
503@@ -154,10 +154,7 @@
504
505
506 # All this because "-l calc-maint" doesn't work.
507-maint: calc-maint.elc
508-calc-maint.elc: calc-maint.el
509- cp calc-maint.el calc-maint.elc
510-
511+maint: calc-maint.el
512
513 # Create an Emacs TAGS file
514 tags: TAGS
515
516--- calc-aent.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:36 1996
517+++ calc-aent.el Tue Nov 21 18:34:33 2000
518@@ -385,7 +385,7 @@
519 (calc-minibuffer-contains
520 "\\`\\([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\"\\)*[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\\'"))
521 (insert "`")
522- (setq alg-exp (buffer-string))
523+ (setq alg-exp (field-string))
524 (and (> (length alg-exp) 0) (setq calc-previous-alg-entry alg-exp))
525 (exit-minibuffer))
526 )
527@@ -393,14 +393,14 @@
528
529 (defun calcAlg-enter ()
530 (interactive)
531- (let* ((str (buffer-string))
532+ (let* ((str (field-string))
533 (exp (and (> (length str) 0)
534 (save-excursion
535 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
536 (math-read-exprs str)))))
537 (if (eq (car-safe exp) 'error)
538 (progn
539- (goto-char (point-min))
540+ (goto-char (field-beginning))
541 (forward-char (nth 1 exp))
542 (beep)
543 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message
544@@ -455,14 +455,14 @@
545 (interactive)
546 (if (calc-minibuffer-contains ".*[@oh] *[^'m ]+[^'m]*\\'")
547 (calcDigit-key)
548- (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
549+ (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
550 (exit-minibuffer))
551 )
552
553 (defun calcDigit-edit ()
554 (interactive)
555 (calc-unread-command)
556- (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
557+ (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
558 (exit-minibuffer)
559 )
560
561--- calc.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:47 1996
562+++ calc.el Wed Nov 22 13:08:49 2000
563@@ -2051,11 +2051,11 @@
564 ;; Exercise for the reader: Figure out why this is a good precaution!
565 (or (boundp 'calc-buffer)
566 (use-local-map minibuffer-local-map))
567- (let ((str (buffer-string)))
568+ (let ((str (field-string)))
569 (setq calc-digit-value (save-excursion
570 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
571 (math-read-number str))))
572- (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (buffer-size) 0))
573+ (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (field-end) (field-beginning)))
574 (progn
575 (beep)
576 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message " [Bad format]"))
577@@ -2071,7 +2071,7 @@
578
579 (defun calc-minibuffer-contains (rex)
580 (save-excursion
581- (goto-char (point-min))
582+ (goto-char (field-end (point-min)))
583 (looking-at rex))
584 )
585
586@@ -2158,10 +2158,8 @@
587 (upcase last-command-char))))
588 (and dig
589 (< dig radix)))))))
590- (save-excursion
591- (goto-char (point-min))
592- (looking-at
593- "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'")))
594+ (calc-minibuffer-contains
595+ "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'"))
596 (if (and (memq last-command-char '(?@ ?o ?h ?\' ?m))
597 (string-match " " calc-hms-format))
598 (insert " "))
599@@ -2190,7 +2188,7 @@
600 ((eq last-command 'calcDigit-start)
601 (erase-buffer))
602 (t (backward-delete-char 1)))
603- (if (= (buffer-size) 0)
604+ (if (= (field-beginning) (field-end))
605 (progn
606 (setq last-command-char 13)
607 (calcDigit-nondigit)))
608
609* TeX'ing the Calc manual fails.
610
611The following patches allow to build the Calc manual using texinfo.tex
612from Emacs 19.34 distribution:
613
614*** calc-maint.e~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:26 1996
615--- calc-maint.el Sun Dec 10 14:32:38 2000
616***************
617*** 308,314 ****
618 (insert "@tex\n"
619 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
620 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
621! (setq midpos (point))
622 (insert "@end tex\n")
623 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
624 (insert "@bye\n")
625--- 308,314 ----
626 (insert "@tex\n"
627 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
628 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
629! (setq midpos (point-marker))
630 (insert "@end tex\n")
631 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
632 (insert "@bye\n")
633*** Makefile.~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:24 1996
634--- Makefile Sun Dec 10 14:44:00 2000
635***************
636*** 98,106 ****
637 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
638 tex:
639 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
640! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
641 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
642! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
643 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
644 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
645 $(PURGE) calc.toc
646--- 98,106 ----
647 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
648 tex:
649 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
650! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
651 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
652! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
653 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
654 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
655 $(PURGE) calc.toc
656*** calc.texinfo.~1~ Thu Oct 10 18:18:56 1996
657--- calc.texinfo Mon Dec 11 08:25:00 2000
658***************
659*** 12,17 ****
660--- 12,19 ----
661 % Because makeinfo.c exists, we can't just define new commands.
662 % So instead, we take over little-used existing commands.
663 %
664+ % Suggested by Karl Berry <karl@@freefriends.org>
665+ \gdef\!{\mskip-\thinmuskip}
666 % Redefine @cite{text} to act like $text$ in regular TeX.
667 % Info will typeset this same as @samp{text}.
668 \gdef\goodtex{\tex \let\rm\goodrm \let\t\ttfont \turnoffactive}
669***************
670*** 23686,23692 ****
671 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
672 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
673 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
1c34d4e1 674! to move this vector to the stack; @pxref{Trail Commands}.)
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675
676 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
677 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
678--- 23689,23695 ----
679 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
680 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
681 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
682! to move this vector to the stack; see @ref{Trail Commands}.)
683
684 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
685 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
686
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687* Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
688
689As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
690characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
691etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
692different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
693which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
694encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
695text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
696into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
697buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
698
699To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
700
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701* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
702
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703This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
704slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
705e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
706Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
707correctly by Emacs 21.
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709* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
710from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
711shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
712These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
713library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
714
715On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
716environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
717can be found.
718
719Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
720Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
721specified run-time search path in the executable.
722
723Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
724
0c6456ad 725* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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726C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
727compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
728release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
729another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
730and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 731
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732* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
733
734The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
735following message:
736
737 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
738
739To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
740INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
741functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
742
743 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
744 {
745 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
746 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
747
748Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
749with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
750
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751* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
752
753The typical error message might be like this:
754
755 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
756
757This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
758tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
759files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
760Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
761when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
762required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
763its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
764
765Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
766file could fail to load if it is compressed.
767
768The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
769file.
770
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771* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
772
773If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
774representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
775ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.3
776with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other systems as well. To
777avoid this problem, switch to using the standard ftp client. On a
778Debian system, type
779
780 update-alternatives --config ftpd
781
782and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
783
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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
789ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
790
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791* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
792mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
793exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
794seen.
795
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796* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
797remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
798keyboard(5).
799
800Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
801% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
802% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
803
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804* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
805
806Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
807It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
808system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
809the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
810
811* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
812
813This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
814assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
815To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
816or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
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817Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
818
819* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
820
821Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
822
823 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
824 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
825 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
826 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
827 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
828 /******************************************************************
829
830 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
831 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
832 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
833 XLCd lcd;
834 {
835 - char* begin;
836 - char* end;
837 + char* begin = NULL;
838 + char* end = NULL;
839 char* ret;
840 int i = 0;
841 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
842 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
843 }
844 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
845 if (ret != NULL) {
846 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
847 + if (begin != NULL) {
848 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
849 + } else {
850 + ret[0] = '\0';
851 + }
852 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
853 }
854 return ret;
855
856
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857* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
858
859This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
860
861* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
862
863This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
864It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
865
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866* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
867
868This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
869combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
870definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
871might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
872purposes.
873
874We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
875you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
876
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877* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
878the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
879
880You can fix this by editing the file:
881
882 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
883
884Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
885
886 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
887
888that should read:
889
890 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
891
892Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
893
894* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
895 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
896
897This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
898Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
899
900* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
901
902Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
903problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
904documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
905
906* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
907
908These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
909particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
910configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
911configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
912change this.
913
914* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
915
916When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
917(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
918then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
919correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
920gives the appearance of "double spacing".
921
922To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
923feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
924
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925* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
926
927This problem manifests itself as an error message
928
929 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
930
931The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
932were built for an older system version,
933
934 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
935
936made the problem go away.
937
938* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
939
940This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
941as of 8 Dec 1998.
942
943The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
944
945* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
946the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
947next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
948
949* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
950
951This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
952a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
953likely to cause it.
954
955We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
956
957* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
958
959This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
960
961* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
962
963This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
964
965* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
966Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
967`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
968'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
969
970* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
971(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
972Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
973earlier versions.
974
975--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
976+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
977@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
978 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
979 (cond
980 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
981- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
982+ (insert-file-contents entity)
983 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
984 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
985 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
986
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987* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
988
989Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
990these problems.
991
992* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
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993about a read-only tex output buffer.
994
995This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
996versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
997package.
998
999diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1000*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1001--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1002***************
1003*** 545,551 ****
1004 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1005 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1006 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1007! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1008 (set-buffer buffer)
1009 (if dir (cd dir))
1010 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1011- --- 545,552 ----
1012 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1013 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1014 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1015! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1016! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1017 (set-buffer buffer)
1018 (if dir (cd dir))
1019 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1020
1021* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1022in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1023
1024 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1025
1026This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1027003082 August 11, 1998.
1028
1029* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1030
1031The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1032 (standard-display-european t)
1033That should be changed to
1034 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1035
1036* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1037
1038You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1039supplies the `install-info' command.
1040
1041* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1042
1043To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1044rights, containing this text:
1045
1046--------------------------------
1047xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1048keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1049keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1050EOF
1051
1052xmodmap - << EOF
1053clear mod1
1054keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1055add mod1 = Meta_L
1056keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1057add mod2 = Mode_switch
1058EOF
1059--------------------------------
1060
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1061* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1062
1063This happens because KDE intercepts the X clipboard and appears not to
1064notify Emacs properly when it is done. A C-g will not interrupt this:
1065Emacs will print "Quit", but will continue waiting. After a while,
1066Emacs will print a message:
1067
1068 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1069
1070A workaround is to kill the KDE application called `klipper'.
1071
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1072* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1073in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1074drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1075
1076This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1077device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1078work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1079
1080* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1081
1082See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1083for character composition.
1084
1085* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1086
1087This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1088full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1089/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1090
1091127.0.0.1 localhost
1092129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1093
1094The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1095
1096* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1097
1098So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1099is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1100properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1101`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1102in Emacs.
1103
1104* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1105
3d00585e
EZ
1106This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1107characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1108characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1109support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1110
3d00585e
EZ
1111To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1112this at your shell's prompt:
1113
1114 ispell -vv
1115
1116and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1117"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1118does not.
1119
1120To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1121in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1122Then rebuild the speller.
1123
1124Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1125version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1126
1127Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1128in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1129Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1130it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1131spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
a933dad1
DL
1132
1133* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
11345.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1135
1136This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1137One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1138known to work.
1139
1140* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1141CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1142
1143This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1144
1145Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1146events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1147distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1148combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1149AltGr has been pressed.
1150
1151* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1152
1153The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1154screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1155display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1156to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1157
1158This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1159well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1160
1161There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1162running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1163un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1164selection".
1165
1166Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1167please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1168If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1169here.
1170
1171* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1172
1173The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1174Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1175(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1176You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1177You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1178look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1179are currently recommended for your host.
1180
1181On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1182105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1183105284-18 might fix it again.
1184
3156909f
PE
1185* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1186
1187This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1188the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1189support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1190If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
DL
1191
1192One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1193For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1194variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1195lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1196should do.
1197
3156909f
PE
1198pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1199if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1200libraries.
a933dad1
DL
1201
1202* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1203
1204You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1205either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1206calls for specifying this.
1207
1208If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1209mail-host-address to the value you want.
1210
1211* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1212
1213Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1214virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1215the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1216error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1217exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1218memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1219
1220You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1221But you have to be root to do it.
1222
1223According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1224
1225 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1226 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1227 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1228 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1229 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1230
1231(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1232These changes take effect when you reboot.
1233
1234* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1235
1236We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1237scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1238happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1239on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1240
1241Here's how to do this:
1242
1243 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1244
1245If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1246try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1247to normal, do
1248
1249 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1250
1251* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1252
1253Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1254supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1255many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1256
1257If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1258server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1259You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1260
1261The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1262display all the characters Emacs supports.
1263
4c635a29
DL
1264Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1265missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1266character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1267but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1268of this character to display a space.
1269
a933dad1
DL
1270* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1271
1272You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1273
1274* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1275
1276This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1277than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1278lines do not overlap.
1279
1280* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1281video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1282
1283This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1284your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1285check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1286
1287* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1288directories that have the +t bit.
1289
1290This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1291Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1292with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1293link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1294
1295If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1296file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1297
1298* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1299commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1300
1301You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1302
1303 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1304
1305* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1306appear on disk.
1307
1308This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1309remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1310implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1311detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1312calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1313where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1314
1315* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1316
1317If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1318will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1319in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1320did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1321character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1322must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1323
1324You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1325them to two different keys.
1326
1327* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1328
1329If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1330without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1331
1332* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1333
1334Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1335NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1336entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1337listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1338the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1339old POP protocol.
1340
1341* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1342
1343This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1344use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1345an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1346happens to exist on your X server).
1347
1348* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1349
1350This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1351prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1352to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1353
1354Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1355(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1356
1357* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1358
1359We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1360the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1361does not happen.
1362
1363* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1364
1365We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1366Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1367makes the problem stop:
1368
1369105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1370105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1371106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1372105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1373
1374Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1375suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1376
1377106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1378106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1379105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1380
1381* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1382
1383`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1384The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1385
1386The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1387"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1388with the user.
1389
1390On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1391pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1392communicate with the subprocess.
1393
1394On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1395relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1396redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1397stdin.
1398
1399A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1400
1401For Perl 4:
1402
1403 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1404 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1405 ***************
1406 *** 68,74 ****
1407 $rcfile=".perldb";
1408 }
1409 else {
1410 ! $console = "con";
1411 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1412 }
1413
1414 --- 68,74 ----
1415 $rcfile=".perldb";
1416 }
1417 else {
1418 ! $console = "";
1419 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1420 }
1421
1422
1423 For Perl 5:
1424 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1425 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1426 ***************
1427 *** 22,28 ****
1428 $rcfile=".perldb";
1429 }
1430 elsif (-e "con") {
1431 ! $console = "con";
1432 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1433 }
1434 else {
1435 --- 22,28 ----
1436 $rcfile=".perldb";
1437 }
1438 elsif (-e "con") {
1439 ! $console = "";
1440 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1441 }
1442 else {
1443
1444* Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1445
1446Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1447others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1448
1449When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1450hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1451by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1452finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1453instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1454can find out the process id.
1455
1456It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1457M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1458start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1459programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1460work.
1461
1462* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1463
1464There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1465
1466 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1467 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1468 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1469
1470To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1471subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1472them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1473incorrect library functions.
1474
f1e54ce1
EZ
1475* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1476
1477If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1478Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1479program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1480config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1481the front of your PATH environment variable.
1482
a933dad1
DL
1483* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1484like make-docfile.
1485
1486This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1487variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1488compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1489the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1490
1491* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1492run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
1493(Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
1494immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1495the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
1496and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.)
1497
1498This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1499support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1500characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1501You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1502filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1503compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1504explains this issue in more detail.
1505
1506* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1507
1508 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1509
1510This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1511on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1512value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1513works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1514support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1515undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1516[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1517`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1518your system works as before.
1519
1520* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1521
1522This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1523You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1524
1525* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1526
1527This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1528you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1529and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1530
1531* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1532
1533This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1534version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1535definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1536incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1537does not work with this version of ncurses.
1538
1539The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1540
1541* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1542
1543Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1544editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1545as GCC.
1546
1547* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1548on GNU/Linux systems.
1549
1550This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
15511.3.75.
1552
1553* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1554
1555There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1556caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1557problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1558is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1559
1560Using the old library version is a workaround.
1561
1562* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1563
1564This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1565version of Solaris that you are using.
1566
1567* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1568
1569Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1570102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1571Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1572by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1573However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1574
1575Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1576you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1577We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1578for certain.
1579
1580 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1581 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1582 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1583
1584(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1585with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1586
1587If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1588bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1589
1590Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1591Solaris 2.5.
1592
1593* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1594
1595If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1596of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1597called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1598
1599* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1600Emacs built with Motif.
1601
1602This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1603such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1604
1605* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1606
1607A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1608in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1609find that string, and take out the spaces.
1610
1611Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1612
1613* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1614
1615This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1616many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1617swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1618can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1619command `swap -l'.
1620
1621You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1622line like this:
1623
1624/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1625
1626where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1627by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1628that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1629new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1630information.
1631
1632The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1633swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1634on the network that can log on to the host.
1635
1636If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1637the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1638some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1639icons.
1640
1641You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1642FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1643("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1644ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1645
1646* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1647character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1648
1649One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1650away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1651XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1652
1653* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1654
1655This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1656on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1657version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1658it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1659
1660* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1661(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1662
1663Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1664
1665* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1666with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1667
1668On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1669`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1670Definitions" to make them defined.
1671
1672* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1673 ld: Undefined symbol
1674 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1675 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1676
1677The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1678or link libXmu statically.
1679
1680* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1681 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1682 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1683
1684This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1685these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1686you build Emacs:
1687
1688 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1689 chmod 664 libIM.a
1690 ranlib libIM.a
1691
1692Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1693Makefile).
1694
1695* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1696
1697A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1698the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1699
1700We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1701
1702* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1703Windows.
1704
1705A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1706Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1707problem.
1708
1709* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1710
1711Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1712and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1713know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1714memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1715However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1716
1717You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1718arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1719information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1720is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1721
1722Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1723configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1724removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1725and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1726the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1727
1728* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1729
1730twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1731You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1732
1733 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1734
1735* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1736
1737This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1738the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1739Emacs's configure script.
1740
1741* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1742
1743This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1744problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1745configure script.
1746
1747* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1748
1749If you get errors such as
1750
1751 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1752 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1753 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1754
1755This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1756to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1757script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1758make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1759ones available when you build Emacs.
1760
1761* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1762other non-English HP keyboards too).
1763
1764This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1765shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1766configures the X server.
1767
1768 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1769 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1770 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1771 EOF
1772
1773 xmodmap - << EOF
1774 clear mod1
1775 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1776 add mod1 = Meta_L
1777 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1778 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1779 EOF
1780
1781* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1782
1783Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1784command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1785Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1786manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1787shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1788
1789 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1790
1791* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1792
1793There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1794that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1795
1796* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1797
1798The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1799be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1800to allocate ptys reliably.
1801
1802* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1803
1804The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1805Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1806compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1807workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1808syms.h.
1809
1810* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1811
1812People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1813startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1814
1815This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1816Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1817improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1818networked and non-networked machines.
1819
1820Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1821
1822** Networked Case
1823
1824First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1825exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1826(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1827
1828 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1829
1830Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1831lines:
1832
1833 order hosts, bind
1834 multi on
1835
1836Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1837indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1838database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1839dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1840
1841** Non-Networked Case
1842
1843The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1844However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1845simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1846`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1847file is not necessary with this approach.
1848
1849* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1850forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1851
1852casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1853after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1854
1855 #if ThreadedX
1856 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1857 #endif
1858
1859to:
1860
1861 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1862 #if ThreadedX
1863 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1864 #endif
1865 #endif
1866
1867Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1868(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1869OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1870Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1871definition for your type of machine and system.
1872
1873Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1874the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1875Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1876
1877For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1878101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1879to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1880patch.
1881
1882However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1883he changed
1884 #define ThreadedX YES
1885to
1886 #define ThreadedX NO
1887in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1888`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1889typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1890
1891* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1892 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1893
1894This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1895with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1896another escape character in kermit. One user did
1897
1898 set escape-character 17
1899
1900in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1901
1902* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1903
1904This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1905
1906 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1907
1908That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1909do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1910explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1911the resource prevents the problem.
1912
1913* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1914
1915We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1916one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1917
1918100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1919100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1920100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1921100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1922100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1923
1924We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1925which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1926
1927* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1928
1929This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1930installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1931specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1932corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1933the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1934Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1935files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1936original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1937not to work.
1938
1939The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
1940when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
1941is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
1942same directory where system header files are kept.
1943
1944* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
1945
1946This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
1947are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
1948does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
1949later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
1950described in the Solaris FAQ
1951<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
1952to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
1953
1954* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
1955
1956This shell command should fix it:
1957
1958 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
1959
1960* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
1961
1962On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
1963with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
1964version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
1965C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
1966GCC.
1967
1968* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
1969
1970This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
1971for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
1972/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
1973
1974* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1975
1976On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1977works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1978bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1979the Files menu).
1980
1981This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1982due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1983knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1984workaround can be found.
1985
1986* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
1987
1988The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
1989that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
1990fonts, so it does not work.
1991
1992This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
1993the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
1994emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
1995that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
1996resources affect Emacs also:
1997
1998 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
1999 *Background: scoBackground
2000 *Foreground: scoForeground
2001
2002The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2003Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2004
2005 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2006 Emacs*Background: white
2007 Emacs*Foreground: black
2008
2009(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2010suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2011starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2012environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2013as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2014/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2015but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2016Open Desktop display.
2017
2018These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2019machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2020
2021* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2022
2023This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2024The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2025
2026* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2027
2028This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2029doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2030because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2031libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2032those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2033install them and rebuild Emacs.
2034
2035* Loading fonts is very slow.
2036
2037You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2038Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2039directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2040"fonts.scale".
2041
2042If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2043font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2044
2045With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2046directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2047Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2048
2049* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2050
2051Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2052ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2053lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2054treated as control characters.
2055
2056You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2057releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2058
2059* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2060
2061Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2062versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2063cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2064This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2065processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2066
2067Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2068the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2069
2070The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2071
2072* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2073
2074This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2075C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2076
2077* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2078 segmentation fault and core dump.
2079
2080This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2081added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2082
2083 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2084
2085If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2086untar it :-).
2087
2088* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2089
2090To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2091
2092 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2093
2094and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2095
2096The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2097cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2098
2099* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2100
2101There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2102the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2103workaround/fix is:
2104
2105 cd /lib
2106 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2107 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2108
2109* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2110
2111If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2112with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2113the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2114libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2115toolkit.)
2116
2117If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2118lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2119X11R4, then use it in the link.
2120
2121* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2122
2123This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2124Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2125Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2126where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2127
2128So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2129
2130* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2131
2132This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2133smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2134on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2135problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2136
2137 if ($?EMACS) then
2138 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2139 unset edit
2140 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2141 endif
2142 endif
2143
2144* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2145parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2146
2147This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2148 emacs*Cursor: black
2149(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2150that isn't a color.)
2151
2152The fix is to correct your X resources.
2153
2154* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2155
2156If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2157_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2158-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2159
2160This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2161extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2162
2163* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2164
2165This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2166to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2167Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2168
2169* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2170
2171This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2172had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2173
2174* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2175
2176If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2177resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2178renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2179font.
2180
2181One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2182your font path, like this:
2183
2184 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2185
2186* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2187
2188An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2189
2190 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2191
2192This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2193individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2194want, rewrite the resource.
2195
2196To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2197-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2198the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2199
2200* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2201
2202On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2203unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2204toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2205libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2206unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2207and Solaris in version 19.29.
2208
2209* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2210
2211This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2212commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2213Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2214hand.
2215
2216* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2217
2218This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2219The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2220such as bash.
2221
2222* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2223
2224A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2225exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2226applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2227communicating through pipes.
2228
2229* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2230
2231Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2232sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2233delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2234program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2235means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2236command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2237obtain the destination address.
2238
2239There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2240In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2241non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
22422.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
22434.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2244have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2245of this writing, these official versions are available:
2246
2247 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2248 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2249 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2250 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2251 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2252
2253 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2254 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2255
2256* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2257
2258 Could not load program emacs
2259 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2260 Error was: Exec format error
2261
2262or this one:
2263
2264 Could not load program .emacs
2265 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2266 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2267 Error was: Exec format error
2268
2269These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2270compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2271
2272* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2273
2274 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2275 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2276
2277This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2278libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2279X11Dev... with smit.
2280
2281* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2282
2283This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2284Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2285character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2286to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2287
2288For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2289
2290 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2291
2292If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2293Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2294xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2295
2296* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2297
2298You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2299though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2300or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2301
2302* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2303
2304These control the actions of Emacs.
2305~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2306EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2307"load" will search.
2308
2309If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2310of them, then try again.
2311
2312* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2313
2314Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2315mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2316the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2317
2318Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2319you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2320operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2321configure script) that reads:
2322#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2323This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2324the kernel bug.
2325
2326* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2327directly with an X server.
2328
2329If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2330does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2331whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2332followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2333it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2334have made the key binding correctly.
2335
2336If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2337be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2338server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2339default.
2340
2341If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2342
2343 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2344 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2345
2346If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2347commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2348are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2349modifier bit not otherwise used.
2350
2351If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2352keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2353some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2354commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2355
2356Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2357into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2358
2359* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2360
2361On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2362file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2363does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2364value is just ten seconds.
2365
2366If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2367
2368* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2369
2370On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2371in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2372expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2373in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2374
2375The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2376anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2377
2378I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2379going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2380Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2381in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2382
2383* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2384
2385Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2386the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2387sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2388
2389* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2390
2391Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2392
2393* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2394the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2395* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2396* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2397
2398This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2399libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2400shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2401similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2402
2403The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2404the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2405
2406The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2407installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2408
2409On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2410
2411If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2412then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2413do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2414or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2415that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2416be careful not to lose the others.
2417
2418Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2419
2420#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2421
2422Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2423the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2424again to say this:
2425
2426#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2427
2428* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2429
2430 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2431
2432The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2433
2434The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2435
2436* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2437
2438This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2439with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2440corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2441
2442* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2443
2444People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2445Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2446
2447* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2448
2449christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2450
2451The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2452execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2453tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2454but tty is giving it back 3.
2455
2456The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2457word:
2458
2459if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2460
2461should be changed to:
2462
2463if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2464
2465Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2466and into .login.
2467
2468* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2469
2470Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2471
2472* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2473* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2474
2475One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2476your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2477the environment.
2478
2479* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2480
2481If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2482`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2483that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2484with a floating point option other than the default.
2485
2486It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2487crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2488However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2489floating point option: -fsoft.
2490
2491* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2492
2493The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2494arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2495tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2496
2497I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2498whether this problem is present on a given system.
2499
2500* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2501 as a concentrator.
2502
2503This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
25047 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2505
2506* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2507
2508This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2509version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2510
2511* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2512 terminal type.
2513
2514The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2515environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2516provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2517emulates.
2518
2519Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2520in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2521it only if it is undefined.
2522
2523 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2524
2525Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2526happen in a non-login shell.
2527
2528* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2529
2530People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2531not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2532the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2533the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2534
2535You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2536However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2537you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2538
2539The easy way to do this is to put
2540
2541 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2542
2543in your site-init.el file.
2544
2545* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2546
2547On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2548may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2549is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2550As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2551
2552* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2553
2554You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2555
2556 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2557
2558This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2559Here is how to make more of them.
2560
2561 % cd /dev
2562 % ls pty*
2563 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2564 % /etc/crpty 8
2565 # creates eight new pty's
2566
2567* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2568
2569This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2570Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2571
2572It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2573space available on the machine.
2574
2575On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2576subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2577for large blocks (many pages).
2578
2579* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2580* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2581* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2582* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2583
2584This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2585fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2586binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2587
2588In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2589It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2590a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2591itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2592when unpacking the shell archive.
2593
2594I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2595what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2596file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2597
2598If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2599nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2600
2601 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2602 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2603 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2604 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2605 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2606 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2607 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2608 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2609 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2610 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2611 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2612 and remake temacs.
2613 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2614
2615* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2616
2617This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2618files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2619space than was allocated.
2620
2621This could be caused by
2622 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2623 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2624 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2625 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2626 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2627 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2628 deleting that file.
2629 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2630 (not from the directory you expected).
2631 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2632 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2633 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2634 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2635 the space required.
2636
2637If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2638of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2639
2640But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2641of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2642problem.
2643
2644* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2645
2646You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2647Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2648will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2649and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2650
2651Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2652than the corresponding .el file.
2653
2654* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2655
2656Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2657
26581) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2659as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2660it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2661value in the man page for a.out (5).
2662
26632) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2664initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2665of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2666not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2667may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2668
2669* Compilation errors on VMS.
2670
2671You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2672variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2673This is not an error. Ignore it.
2674
2675VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2676were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2677
2678There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2679in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2680 char c = -1, d = 1;
2681 int i;
2682
2683 i = d ? c : d;
2684The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2685conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2686constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2687
2688* rmail gets error getting new mail
2689
2690rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2691called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2692the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2693
2694There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2695the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2696`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2697this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2698the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2699IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2700SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2701
2702If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2703prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2704you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2705`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2706
2707 chgrp mail movemail
2708 chmod 2755 movemail
2709
2710If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2711prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2712you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2713`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2714make install.
2715
2716 chgrp mail movemail
2717 chmod 2755 movemail
2718
2719Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2720installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2721installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2722/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2723mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2724directory copy is ineffective.
2725
2726* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2727
2728This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2729used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2730away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2731streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2732user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2733properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2734input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2735easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2736
2737There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2738
2739 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2740 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2741 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2742
2743First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2744they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2745"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2746escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2747and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2748control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2749
2750Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2751needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2752by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2753rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2754your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2755it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2756the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2757problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2758to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2759
2760For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2761giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2762codes. You might as well try it.
2763
2764If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2765through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2766computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2767much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2768control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2769you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2770replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2771measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2772
2773You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2774handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2775enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2776now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2777enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2778control handling.)
2779
2780If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2781is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2782other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2783and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2784other control characters are already used by emacs.
2785
2786IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2787Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2788order to continue.
2789
2790If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2791certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2792`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2793automatically. Here is an example:
2794
2795(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2796
2797If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2798and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2799manually.
2800
2801I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2802assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2803control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2804merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2805widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2806use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2807will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2808of inferior systems.
2809
2810* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2811
2812For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2813control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2814terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2815that wants to use flow control.
2816
2817You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2818If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2819flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2820
2821If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2822into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2823shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2824
2825* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2826
2827Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2828control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2829On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2830control on the local system.
2831
2832One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2833(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2834stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2835"stty start u stop u" will do this.
2836
2837Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2838around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2839issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2840
2841If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2842M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2843if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2844following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2845
2846(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2847
2848See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2849info.
2850
2851* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2852
2853This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2854terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2855the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2856
2857The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2858Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2859(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2860terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2861what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2862and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2863There are several possibilities:
2864
28651) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2866
2867In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2868need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2869
28702) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2871 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2872 by termcap.
2873
2874This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2875Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2876and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2877classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2878Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2879tested on many kinds of terminals.
2880
28813) The termcap entry is wrong.
2882
2883See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2884that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2885for certain terminals.
2886
28874) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2888 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2889
2890This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2891in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2892
2893* Output from Control-V is slow.
2894
2895On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2896Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2897to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2898before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2899the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2900it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2901
2902If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2903that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2904specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2905concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2906send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2907fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2908time as the operations really take.
2909
2910Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2911at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2912terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2913operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2914flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2915an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2916Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2917cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2918not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2919is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2920
2921Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2922multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2923termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2924fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2925each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2926to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2927`cm' string.
2928
2929You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2930has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2931take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2932
2933A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2934of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2935
2936* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2937
2938The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2939
2940 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2941 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2942
2943This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2944
2945* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
2946
2947Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
2948after a day or two.
2949
2950The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
2951the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
2952character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
2953of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
2954overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
2955to it.
2956
2957For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
2958and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
2959other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
2960but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
2961that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
2962important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
2963
2964If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
2965you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
2966 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
2967You can probably access help-command via f1.
2968
2969* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
2970It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
2971but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
2972causes it.
2973
2974 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
2975 call in the RFS server.
2976
2977 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
2978 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
2979 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
2980 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
2981
2982 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
2983
2984 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
2985 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
2986 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
2987 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
2988 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
2989 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
2990 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
2991
2992 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
2993
2994 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2995 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
2996 retrieving revision 1.2
2997 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2998 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
2999 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3000 ***************
3001 *** 163,169 ****
3002 /*
3003 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3004 */
3005 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3006 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3007 else
3008 {
3009 --- 166,172 ----
3010 /*
3011 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3012 */
3013 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3014 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3015 else
3016 {
3017
3018* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3019
3020You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3021
3022 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3023 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3024
3025These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3026Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3027may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3028on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3029in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3030can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3031that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3032
3033As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3034you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3035can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3036should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3037array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3038 Lisp_Object *args;
3039 ...
3040 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3041putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3042 Lisp_Object *args;
3043 Lisp_Object tem;
3044 ...
3045 tem = args[i];
3046 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3047causes the problem to go away.
3048The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3049so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3050
3051* 68000 C compiler problems
3052
3053Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3054These are some that have been observed.
3055
3056** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3057This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3058if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3059
3060** "cannot reclaim" error.
3061
3062This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3063line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3064simpler expressions.
3065
3066** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3067
3068If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3069Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3070
3071struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3072
3073lose (arg)
3074 struct foo arg;
3075{
3076 test ((int *) arg.y);
3077}
3078
3079If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3080In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3081((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3082
3083This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3084of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3085
3086* C compilers lose on returning unions
3087
3088I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3089Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3090defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3091
3092This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3093of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3094