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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* Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 22.
5
6It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
7
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8* Process output truncated on Mac OS X (Carbon) when using pty's.
9
10There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
11Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
12leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
13
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14* Emacs crashes on Mac OS X (Carbon) after system software upgrade.
15
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16This problem seems to be now solved by Steven Tamm's patch to
17unexmacosx.c on Nov 24, 2002.
18
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19Between Mac OS X release 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 there was an incompatible
20change in the memory allocator that causes a EXC_BAD_ACCESS error near
21xrealloc(). Relinking the application (by deleting src/temacs and
22running make) will solve the problem. It appears to be caused by some
23problems with the unexec code and its interaction with libSystem.B.
fc2938d1 24
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25* Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
26
27XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
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28minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
29name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
30according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
31characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
32able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
33C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
34font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
35include in the fontset spec:
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36
37mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
38mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
39mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
40
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41* The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
42
43Emacs by default only supports the parts of the Unicode BMP whose code
44points are in the ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff. This excludes: most
45of CJK, Yi and Hangul, as well as everything outside the BMP.
46
47If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
48characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
49(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
50correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
51If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
52substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
53information.
54
55To edit such UTF data, turn on Utf-Translate-Cjk mode, which makes
56many common CJK characters available for encoding and decoding and can
57be extended by updating the tables it uses. This also allows you to
58save as UTF buffers containing characters decoded by the chinese-,
59japanese- and korean- coding systems, e.g. cut and pasted from
60elsewhere.
60f553d2 61
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62* Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
63
64When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
65graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
66and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
67file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
68
4af77d9f 69The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
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70for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
71
72Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
73but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
74the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
75
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76* Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X) running on Solaris 7 or 8.
77
78This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
79Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
80
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81* Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
82
83Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
84library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
85following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
86though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
87distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
88
89--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
90+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
91@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
177c0ea7 92
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93 (mapcar
94 (lambda (x)
95- (mapcar
96- (lambda (y)
97- (mucs-define-coding-system
98- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
99- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
100- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
101- (cdr x)))
102+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
103+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
104+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
105+ ;; system definitions.
106+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
107+ (mucs-define-coding-system
108+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
109+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
110+ (mapcar
111+ (lambda (y)
112+ (mucs-define-coding-system
113+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
114+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
115+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
116+ (cdr x)))
117 `((utf-8
118 (utf-8-unix
119 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
120
121Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
122Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
123
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124* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
125
126This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
127of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
128version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
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129dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
130around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
131incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
132". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
133directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
134variables).
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135
136The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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137`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
138when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
139unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
140run the script like this:
141
173de997 142 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
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143
144(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
145the script).
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146
147Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
148Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
149
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150* Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
151undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
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152
153This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
154with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
155GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
156from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
157compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
158link stage.
159
160A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
161
162 make CC=gcc
163
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164Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
165with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
166
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167* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
168
169Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
170version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
171necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
172__MSVCRT__, like so:
173
174 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
175
176* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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177
178The error message might be something like this:
179
c24be289 180 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
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181 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
182 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
183 '0xffffffff'
184 Stop.
185
186This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
187which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
188`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
189endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
190or EOL conversions.
191
192The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
193change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
194in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
195which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
196mangling them.
197
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198* Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
199
200The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
201C backtrace printed by GDB:
202
203 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
204 (gdb) where
205 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
206 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
207 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
208 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
209
210This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
211of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
212but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
213other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
214distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
215GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
216following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
217distribution:
218
cbfe0252 219 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
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220 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
221 know what's really going on here. */
222 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
223 0x10000000. */
224 #if defined __linux__
225 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
226 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
227 #endif
228 #endif
229 #endif /* 0 */
230
231Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
232the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
233should now succeed.
234
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235* JPEG images aren't displayed.
236
237This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
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238Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
239correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
240against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
9ed04369 241
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242* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
243
244This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
245defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
246patch to assert.h should solve this:
247
248*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
249--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
250***************
251*** 41,47 ****
252 /*
253 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
254 */
255! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
177c0ea7 256
b87207a0 257 #else /* debugging enabled */
177c0ea7 258
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259--- 41,47 ----
260 /*
261 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
262 */
263! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
177c0ea7 264
b87207a0 265 #else /* debugging enabled */
177c0ea7 266
b87207a0 267
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268
269* Improving performance with slow X connections
270
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271There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
272be carried out at the same time:
273
2741) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
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275 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
276 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
277 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
278 package.
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279
2802) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
281 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
282
2833) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
284 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
285
2864) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
287 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
288 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
289 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
290 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
291 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a seperate
292 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
293 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
294 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
295 For more about lbxproxy, see:
20888a62 296 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
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297
298* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
299
300By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
301FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
302current keymap to a file with the command
303
304 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
305
306Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
307definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
308key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
309to look like this
310
311 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
312
313to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
314
315 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
316
317* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
318
319A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
320into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
321incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
322other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
323been filed.
324
325* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
326
327This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
3282.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
329event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
330Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
331
332A workaround for this is to add something like
333
334emacs.waitForWM: false
335
336to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
337frame's parameter list, like this:
338
339 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
340
341(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
342
343* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
344
345This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
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346Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
347neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
348problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
349`.emacs'.
350
351To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
352type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
353property.
61638355 354
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355* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
356click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
357is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
358problem disappears.
359
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360* There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
361XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
362one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
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363For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
364"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
365used with neXtaw at run time.
366
367The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
368want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
369built Emacs with.
ed0d1d91 370
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371* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
372
373This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
374a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
375--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
376
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377* Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
378
379This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
380terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
381If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
382version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
383and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
384
385All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
386problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
387terminfo when built.
388
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389* Error messages about undefined colors on X.
390
391The messages might say something like this:
392
393 Unable to load color "grey95"
394
395(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
396
397 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
398
399These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
400many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
401resources to load all the colors it needs.
402
403A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
404
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405* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
406
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407Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
408emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
409entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
410"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
411supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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412Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
413uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
414"colors".
415
416In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
417``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
418back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
419use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
420doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
421sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
422it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
423capability).
424
425Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
426attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
427incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
428this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 429
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430Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
431of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 432entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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433`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
434emulator.
ed85f61d 435
f5fdfa60 436Beginning with version 21.4, Emacs supports the --color command-line
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437option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
438modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
439for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
440
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441Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
442Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
443Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
444recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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445global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
446`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 447
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448* Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
449
450This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
451ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
452These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
453the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
454(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
455blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
456cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
457always blinks.
458
459A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
460enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
461the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
462cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
463the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
464cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
465
466To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
467`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
468the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
469produce a modified terminfo entry.
470
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471Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
472change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
473
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474* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
475
476The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
477emulation for which it is set up.
478
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479Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
480Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
481On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
482--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
483successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
484lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
485menu placement.
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486
487On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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488locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
489what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
490developers.
339b95d5 491
fa99e2a4 492* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.2.
b87207a0 493
d6cdfce6 494Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
6fb6f3ac 495is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
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496displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
497synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
498waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
499pop-up menu interaction.
f936978f 500
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501Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
502for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
503
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504There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
505mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
506frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
507after moving back into it.
b87207a0 508
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509Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
510not as severely as in 21.1.
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511
512Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
513characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
514
515An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
516Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
517
fa99e2a4 518Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.2). Some
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519of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
520in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
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521characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
522work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
523you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
524the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
525ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
526appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
527yet.)
528
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529Windows uses UTF-16 encoding to deal with multilingual text (text not
530encodable in the `system codepage') in the clipboard. To deal with
531this, load the library `utf-16' and use `set-selection-coding-system'
20888a62 532to set the clipboard coding system to `utf-16-le-with-signature-dos'.
e085efdb 533
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534The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
535month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
536of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
537library function.
fa99e2a4 538
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539* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
540
fe445893
RS
541There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
542by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
543default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
544
545If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
546`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
547shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
548the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
549Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
cc305a60 550explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
c8d9b4ee 551
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552* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
553
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554This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
555(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
556(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
557configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
558files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
559left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
560itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
cbfe0252 561Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 562
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563In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
564machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
565(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
566This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
567
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568If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
569(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
570you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
571force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
572problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
573blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
574`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
575options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
576`/etc/auto.home'.
577
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578Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
579a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
580waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
581to work around the problem.
d9810886 582
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583Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
584onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
585you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
586`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
587
588 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
589
590The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
591
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592* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
593
594This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
595via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
596binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
597
598 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
599
600We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
601build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
602
9ed04369 603* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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604
605Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
606other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
607that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
608size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
609when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
610fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
611
612To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
613
614 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
615
616If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
617problem.
618
619The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
620`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
621`xset fp rehash'.
622
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623* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
624src/s/hpux10.h.
625
e9a0a549 626* Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
ec6bd013 627libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
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628Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
629if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
630older version.
4e0bd469 631
4dea3d52 632* Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
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633
634By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
635`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
636any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
637vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
638parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
639in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
cbfe0252 640pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
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641introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
642through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
643to the end of a very large buffer.
644
445f98eb 645Beginning with version 21.4, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
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646is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
647to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
648indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
473347f6 649
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650If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
651makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
652fontification by setting the variable
653`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
654be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
655
656Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
657in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
658
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659* When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
660or messed up.
661
cbfe0252 662For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
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663empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
664background.
665
666This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
667definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
668solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
26467c73
GM
669option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
670is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
a38f41c4
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671
672Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
673applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
674(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
675so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
676Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
677present or commented out:
678
679 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
680 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
681 Emacs*Foreground
682 Emacs*Background
683
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684* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
685
686Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
687MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
688port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
689keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
690of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
691
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692* Dired is very slow.
693
694This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
695time. Possible reasons for this include:
696
697 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
698 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
699
700 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
701
702 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
703
704To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
705`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
706invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
707(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
708
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709* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
710
711If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
712due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
713and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
714port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
715are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
716confuses ange-ftp.
717
718The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
719(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
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720Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
721directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
722variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
723client's executable. For example:
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724
725 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
726
727If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
728this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
729
730 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
731
fc2938d1
DL
732* Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
733under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
a953a8d3 734
2ebf6139
GM
735* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
736are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
737so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
738Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
739
cc2f2825 740* Compiling on AIX 4.3.x or 4.4 fails.
ec383c7d 741
9e2305c3 742This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
cc2f2825
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743the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
744redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
745is to use the default compiler `cc'.
746
a14e05ac 747* Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
e1f9a6b3 748`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
9ec9d3d2 749longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
1d297d9b 750
8bd90f0a
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751* PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
752
753PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
754as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
755of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
756sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
757HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
758(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
759(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
760
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761* The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
762
763It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
764Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
765please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
766argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
767
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768* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
769
9ed04369 770This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
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DL
771slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
772flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
773support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
774generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 775
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776* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
777
778The error message might be something like this:
779
780 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
781
782This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
783built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
784for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
785corrects that.
786
cc2f2825
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787* ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
788
789This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
790defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
791runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
792
793The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
794
1f42cc71
JR
795* lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
796
797This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
798likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
799
800Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
801print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
802printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
803built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
804has):
805
806(setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
807(setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
808(setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
809(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
810
f4f4ee4d
GM
811* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
812from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
813shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
814These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
815library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
816
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817Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
818process invokes Emacs several times.
819
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GM
820On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
821environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
822can be found.
823
824Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
825Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
826specified run-time search path in the executable.
827
8643647c 828On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
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829linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
830backtraces like this:
831
832 (dbx) where
833 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
834 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
835 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
836 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
837 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
838 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
839 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
840 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
841 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
842
8643647c
RS
843(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
844happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
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845forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
846to work around the problem.
847
f4f4ee4d
GM
848Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
849
0c6456ad 850* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
9b2999d0
DL
851C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
852compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
853release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
854another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
855and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 856
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857* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
858
859The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
860following message:
861
862 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
863
864To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
865INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
866functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
867
868 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
869 {
870 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
871 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
872
873Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
874with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
875
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876* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
877
878A typical error message might be something like
879
880 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
881
882This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
883Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
884are:
885
886 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
887
888 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
889 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
890 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
891
892One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
893fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
894the problematic line(s) and correct them.
895
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896* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
897
898The typical error message might be like this:
899
900 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
901
902This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
903tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
904files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
905Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
906when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
907required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
b75b82ab 908it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
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909
910Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
911file could fail to load if it is compressed.
912
913The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
914file.
915
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916Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
917lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
918print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
919
920 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
921
922If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
923and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
924load-path.
925
42303132
JR
926* Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
927
928An example of such an error is:
929
177c0ea7 930 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
42303132
JR
931
932This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your classpath.
933The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
934present in load-path:
935
936 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
937
938If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
939and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
940load-path.
941
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942* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
943
944If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
945representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
f2d176f2
CW
946ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
947version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
948systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
949ftp client. On a Debian system, type
f3d6f4ee 950
f2d176f2 951 update-alternatives --config ftp
f3d6f4ee
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952
953and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
954
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955* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
956
957The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
958work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
959was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
960work when an antivirus package is installed.
961
962The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
963mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
964or disable it entirely.
965
c34607fc 966* On MS-Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
f29d1e75
JR
967
968This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
969when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
970cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
cbfe0252 971http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
f29d1e75 972
c34607fc 973* MS-Windows 95/98/ME crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
c24be289 974
4593687f 975When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
c24be289 976Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
94e83484 977particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
5f08ab61 978program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
94e83484 979PATH.
c24be289 980
b35319bf
JR
981* Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
982
983This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
984programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
985mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
986different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
987middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
988"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
989generic mouse driver might help.
990
991* Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
992
993This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
994generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
995movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
996scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
997
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998* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
999mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
1000exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
1001seen.
1002
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1003* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
1004
1005This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1006Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1007modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1008keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1009modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1010was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1011Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1012
1013The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1014modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1015and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1016which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1017the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1018modifier:
1019
1020 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1021
1022A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1023is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1024
1025 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1026
1027This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1028keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1029keys can serve as Meta.
1030
1031The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1032keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1033
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DL
1034* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
1035remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
1036keyboard(5).
1037
1038Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
1039% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
177c0ea7 1040% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
119d3665 1041
a933dad1
DL
1042* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
1043
1044Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
1045It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
1046system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
1047the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
1048
0de9f9a8
EZ
1049* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
1050
1051This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
1052and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
1053manager.
1054
1055This bug was reported to Sun as
1056
1057 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
1058 Bug Reports: 4463537
1059
2aa82bcf 1060Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
0de9f9a8
EZ
1061reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
1062library xiiimp.so.
1063
1064Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
1065the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
1066can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
1067
a933dad1
DL
1068* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
1069
1070This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
1071assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
1072To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
1073or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
a933dad1
DL
1074Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
1075
1076* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
1077
1078Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
1079
1080 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
1081 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
1082 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
1083 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1084 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1085 /******************************************************************
1086
1087 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
1088 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
1089 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
1090 XLCd lcd;
1091 {
1092 - char* begin;
1093 - char* end;
1094 + char* begin = NULL;
1095 + char* end = NULL;
1096 char* ret;
1097 int i = 0;
1098 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
1099 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
1100 }
1101 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
1102 if (ret != NULL) {
1103 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1104 + if (begin != NULL) {
1105 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1106 + } else {
1107 + ret[0] = '\0';
1108 + }
1109 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
1110 }
1111 return ret;
1112
1113
a933dad1 1114* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
177c0ea7 1115
a933dad1
DL
1116This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
1117
1118* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
1119
1120This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
1121It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
1122
de121241
EZ
1123* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1124
1125This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1126combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1127definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1128might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1129purposes.
1130
1131We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1132you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1133
a933dad1
DL
1134* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
1135the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
1136
1137You can fix this by editing the file:
1138
1139 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
177c0ea7 1140
a933dad1
DL
1141Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
1142
1143 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1144
1145that should read:
1146
1147 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1148
1149Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
1150
1151* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
1152 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
1153
1154This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
1155Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
1156
1157* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
1158
1159Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
1160problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
1161documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
1162
1163* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1164
1165These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1166particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1167configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1168configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1169change this.
1170
1171* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
1172
1173When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
1174(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
1175then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
177c0ea7
JB
1176correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
1177gives the appearance of "double spacing".
a933dad1 1178
e9a0a549 1179To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
a933dad1
DL
1180feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
1181
a933dad1
DL
1182* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
1183
1184This problem manifests itself as an error message
1185
1186 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
1187
1188The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
1189were built for an older system version,
1190
1191 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
1192
1193made the problem go away.
1194
1195* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
1196
1197This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
1198as of 8 Dec 1998.
1199
1200The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1201
1202* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1203the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1204next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1205
1206* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1207
1208This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1209a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1210likely to cause it.
1211
1212We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1213
1214* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1215
1216This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1217
1218* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1219
1220This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1221
1222* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1223Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1224`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1225'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1226
1227* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1228(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1229Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1230earlier versions.
1231
1232--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1233+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1234@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1235 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1236 (cond
1237 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1238- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1239+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1240 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1241 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1242 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1243
d238f982
EZ
1244* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1245
1246Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1247these problems.
1248
d7185f9d
EZ
1249* No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
1250
1251Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
1252byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
1253
d238f982 1254* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
a933dad1
DL
1255about a read-only tex output buffer.
1256
1257This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1258versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1259package.
1260
1261diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1262*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1263--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1264***************
1265*** 545,551 ****
1266 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1267 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1268 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1269! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1270 (set-buffer buffer)
1271 (if dir (cd dir))
1272 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1273- --- 545,552 ----
1274 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1275 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1276 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1277! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1278! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1279 (set-buffer buffer)
1280 (if dir (cd dir))
1281 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1282
1283* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1284in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1285
1286 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1287
1288This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1289003082 August 11, 1998.
1290
1291* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1292
1293The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1294 (standard-display-european t)
177c0ea7 1295That should be changed to
a933dad1
DL
1296 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1297
1298* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1299
1300You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1301supplies the `install-info' command.
1302
1303* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1304
1305To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1306rights, containing this text:
1307
1308--------------------------------
1309xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1310keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1311keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1312EOF
1313
1314xmodmap - << EOF
1315clear mod1
1316keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1317add mod1 = Meta_L
1318keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1319add mod2 = Mode_switch
1320EOF
1321--------------------------------
1322
17a37d87
EZ
1323* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1324
62c485d2
GM
1325This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1326requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1327of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1328which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1329while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1330
1331 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1332
62c485d2 1333A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1334
a933dad1
DL
1335* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1336in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1337drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1338
1339This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1340device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1341work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1342
1343* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1344
1345See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1346for character composition.
1347
1348* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1349
1350This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1351full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1352/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1353
1354127.0.0.1 localhost
1355129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1356
1357The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1358
1359* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1360
1361So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1362is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1363properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1364`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1365in Emacs.
1366
1367* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1368
3d00585e
EZ
1369This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1370characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1371characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1372support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1373
3d00585e
EZ
1374To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1375this at your shell's prompt:
1376
1377 ispell -vv
1378
1379and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1380"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1381does not.
1382
1383To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1384in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1385Then rebuild the speller.
1386
1387Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1388version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1389
1390Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1391in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1392Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1393it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1394spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
a933dad1 1395
7838ea1b
GM
1396If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
1397you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
1398can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
1399in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
1400
a933dad1
DL
1401* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
14025.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1403
1404This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1405One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1406known to work.
1407
c34607fc 1408* On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
a933dad1
DL
1409CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1410
1411This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1412
1413Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1414events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1415distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1416combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
c24be289
JR
1417AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
1418to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 1419
b5cb4652
EZ
1420* Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server
1421
1422If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
1423reported to prevent the crashes.
1424
c34607fc 1425* Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect
a933dad1
DL
1426
1427The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1428screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1429display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1430to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1431
e9a0a549
EZ
1432This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
1433as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
1434problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1
DL
1435
1436There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1437running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1438un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1439selection".
1440
1441Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1442please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1443If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1444here.
1445
1446* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1447
1448The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1449Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1450(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1451You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1452You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1453look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1454are currently recommended for your host.
1455
1456On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1457105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1458105284-18 might fix it again.
1459
3156909f
PE
1460* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1461
1462This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1463the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1464support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1465If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
DL
1466
1467One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1468For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1469variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1470lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1471should do.
1472
3156909f
PE
1473pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1474if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1475libraries.
a933dad1 1476
e96c5c69
JD
1477* Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1478
1479This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1480seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1481To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1482and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1483
a933dad1
DL
1484* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1485
1486You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1487either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1488calls for specifying this.
1489
1490If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1491mail-host-address to the value you want.
1492
1493* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1494
1495Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1496virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1497the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1498error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1499exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1500memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1501
1502You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1503But you have to be root to do it.
1504
1505According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1506
1507 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1508 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1509 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1510 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1511 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1512
1513(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1514These changes take effect when you reboot.
1515
1516* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1517
1518We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1519scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1520happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1521on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1522
1523Here's how to do this:
1524
1525 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1526
1527If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1528try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1529to normal, do
1530
1531 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1532
1533* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1534
1535Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1536supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1537many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1538
1539If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1540server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1541You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1542
1543The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1544display all the characters Emacs supports.
1545
4c635a29
DL
1546Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1547missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1548character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1549but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1550of this character to display a space.
1551
a933dad1
DL
1552* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1553
1554You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1555
1556* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1557
1558This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1559than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1560lines do not overlap.
1561
1562* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1563video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1564
1565This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1566your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1567check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1568
1569* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1570directories that have the +t bit.
1571
1572This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1573Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1574with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1575link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1576
1577If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1578file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1579
1580* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1581commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1582
1583You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1584
1585 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1586
1587* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1588appear on disk.
1589
1590This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1591remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1592implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1593detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1594calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1595where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1596
1597* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1598
1599If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1600will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1601in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1602did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1603character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1604must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1605
1606You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1607them to two different keys.
1608
1609* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1610
1611If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1612without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1613
1614* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1615
1616Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1617NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1618entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1619listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1620the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1621old POP protocol.
1622
1623* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1624
1625This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1626use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1627an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1628happens to exist on your X server).
1629
1630* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1631
1632This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1633prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1634to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1635
1636Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1637(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1638
1639* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1640
1641We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1642the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1643does not happen.
1644
1645* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1646
1647We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1648Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1649makes the problem stop:
1650
1651105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1652105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1653106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1654105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1655
1656Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1657suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1658
1659106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1660106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1661105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1662
c34607fc 1663* Problems running Perl under Emacs on MS-Windows NT/95.
a933dad1
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1664
1665`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1666The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1667
1668The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1669"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1670with the user.
1671
1672On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1673pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1674communicate with the subprocess.
1675
1676On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1677relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1678redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1679stdin.
1680
1681A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1682
1683For Perl 4:
1684
1685 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1686 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1687 ***************
1688 *** 68,74 ****
1689 $rcfile=".perldb";
1690 }
1691 else {
1692 ! $console = "con";
1693 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1694 }
1695
1696 --- 68,74 ----
1697 $rcfile=".perldb";
1698 }
1699 else {
1700 ! $console = "";
1701 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1702 }
1703
1704
1705 For Perl 5:
1706 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1707 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1708 ***************
1709 *** 22,28 ****
1710 $rcfile=".perldb";
1711 }
1712 elsif (-e "con") {
1713 ! $console = "con";
1714 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1715 }
1716 else {
1717 --- 22,28 ----
1718 $rcfile=".perldb";
1719 }
1720 elsif (-e "con") {
1721 ! $console = "";
1722 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1723 }
1724 else {
1725
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1726* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1727
1728There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1729
1730 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1731 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1732 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1733
1734To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1735subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1736them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1737incorrect library functions.
1738
c34607fc 1739* When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
f1e54ce1
EZ
1740
1741If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1742Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1743program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1744config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1745the front of your PATH environment variable.
1746
c34607fc 1747* When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
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1748like make-docfile.
1749
1750This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1751variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1752compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1753the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1754
1755* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1756run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a01325b8
EZ
1757
1758Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
a933dad1
DL
1759immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1760the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
a01325b8
EZ
1761and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1762
1763Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1764the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1765Lisp.
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1766
1767This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1768support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1769characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1770You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1771filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1772compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1773explains this issue in more detail.
1774
a01325b8
EZ
1775Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1776MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1777by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1778unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1779them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1780must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1781properly truncated.
1782
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1783* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1784
1785 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1786
1787This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1788on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1789value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1790works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1791support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1792undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1793[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1794`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1795your system works as before.
1796
c34607fc 1797* On MS-Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
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1798
1799This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1800You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1801
c34607fc 1802* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
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1803
1804This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1805you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
c24be289
JR
1806and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
1807more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
1808or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
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1809
1810* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1811
1812This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1813version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1814definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1815incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1816does not work with this version of ncurses.
1817
1818The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1819
287890ea 1820* Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
1dd8b979 1821
10a763e5
RS
1822If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
1823systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
1824ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
1825cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
1826libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
1827obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
1828
1829The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
1830the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
1831symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
1832it constitutes a separate package.
1dd8b979 1833
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1834* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1835
1836Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1837editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1838as GCC.
1839
1840* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1841on GNU/Linux systems.
1842
1843This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
18441.3.75.
1845
1846* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1847
1848There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1849caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1850problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1851is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1852
1853Using the old library version is a workaround.
1854
1855* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1856
1857This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1858version of Solaris that you are using.
1859
1860* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1861
1862Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1863102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1864Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1865by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1866However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1867
1868Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1869you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1870We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1871for certain.
1872
177c0ea7
JB
1873 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1874 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
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1875 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1876
1877(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1878with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1879
1880If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1881bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1882
1883Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1884Solaris 2.5.
1885
1886* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1887
1888If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1889of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1890called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1891
1892* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1893Emacs built with Motif.
1894
1895This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1896such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1897
1898* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1899
1900A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1901in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1902find that string, and take out the spaces.
1903
1904Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1905
1906* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1907
1908This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1909many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1910swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1911can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1912command `swap -l'.
1913
1914You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1915line like this:
1916
1917/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1918
1919where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1920by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1921that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1922new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1923information.
1924
1925The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1926swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1927on the network that can log on to the host.
1928
1929If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1930the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1931some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1932icons.
1933
1934You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1935FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1936("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1937ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1938
1939* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1940character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1941
1942One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1943away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1944XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1945
1946* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1947
1948This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1949on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1950version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1951it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1952
1953* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1954(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1955
1956Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1957
1958* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1959with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1960
1961On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1962`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1963Definitions" to make them defined.
1964
1965* On SunOS, you get linker errors
177c0ea7 1966 ld: Undefined symbol
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1967 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1968 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1969
1970The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1971or link libXmu statically.
1972
1973* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1974 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1975 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1976
1977This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1978these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1979you build Emacs:
1980
1981 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1982 chmod 664 libIM.a
1983 ranlib libIM.a
1984
1985Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1986Makefile).
1987
1988* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1989
1990A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1991the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1992
1993We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1994
1995* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
c34607fc 1996MS-Windows.
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1997
1998A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1999Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2000problem.
2001
2002* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
2003
2004Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
2005and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
2006know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
2007memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
2008However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
2009
2010You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
2011arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
2012information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
2013is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
2014
2015Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
2016configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
2017removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
2018and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
2019the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
2020
2021* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
2022
2023twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
2024You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
2025
2026 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
2027
2028* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2029
2030This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2031the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2032Emacs's configure script.
2033
2034* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2035
2036This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
2037problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2038configure script.
2039
2040* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
2041
2042If you get errors such as
2043
2044 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
2045 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
2046 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
2047
2048This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
2049to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
2050script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
2051make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
2052ones available when you build Emacs.
2053
2054* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
2055other non-English HP keyboards too).
2056
2057This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
2058shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
2059configures the X server.
2060
2061 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
2062 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
2063 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
2064 EOF
2065
2066 xmodmap - << EOF
2067 clear mod1
2068 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
2069 add mod1 = Meta_L
2070 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
2071 add mod2 = Mode_switch
2072 EOF
2073
2074* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
2075
2076Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
2077command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
2078Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
2079manager to use some other command. You can disable the
2080shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
2081
2082 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
2083
2084* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
2085
2086There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
2087that replacing the mouse made it stop.
2088
2089* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
2090
2091The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2092be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2093to allocate ptys reliably.
2094
2095* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
2096
2097The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
2098Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
2099compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
2100workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
2101syms.h.
2102
2103* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
2104
2105People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
2106startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
2107
2108This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
2109Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
2110improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
2111networked and non-networked machines.
2112
2113Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
2114
2115** Networked Case
2116
2117First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
2118exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
2119(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
2120
2121 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
2122
2123Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
2124lines:
2125
177c0ea7 2126 order hosts, bind
a933dad1
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2127 multi on
2128
2129Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
2130indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
2131database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
2132dynamically allocate ip addresses).
2133
2134** Non-Networked Case
2135
2136The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
2137However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
2138simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
2139`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
2140file is not necessary with this approach.
2141
2142* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
2143forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
2144
2145casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
2146after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
2147
2148 #if ThreadedX
2149 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2150 #endif
2151
2152to:
2153
2154 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
2155 #if ThreadedX
2156 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2157 #endif
2158 #endif
2159
2160Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
2161(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
2162OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
2163Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
2164definition for your type of machine and system.
2165
2166Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
2167the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
2168Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
2169
2170For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
2171101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
2172to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
2173patch.
2174
2175However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
2176he changed
2177 #define ThreadedX YES
2178to
2179 #define ThreadedX NO
2180in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
2181`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
2182typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
2183
2184* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
2185 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
2186
2187This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
2188with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
2189another escape character in kermit. One user did
2190
2191 set escape-character 17
2192
2193in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
2194
2195* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
2196
2197This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
2198
2199 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
2200
2201That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
2202do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
2203explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
2204the resource prevents the problem.
2205
2206* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
2207
2208We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2209one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
2210
2211100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2212100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2213100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2214100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2215100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2216
2217We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2218which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2219
2220* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
2221
2222This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
2223installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2224specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2225corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2226the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2227Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2228files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2229original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2230not to work.
2231
2232The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2233when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2234is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2235same directory where system header files are kept.
2236
2237* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2238
2239This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2240are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2241does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2242later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2243described in the Solaris FAQ
2244<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2245to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2246
2247* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2248
2249This shell command should fix it:
2250
2251 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2252
2253* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2254
2255On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2256with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2257version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2258C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2259GCC.
2260
2261* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2262
2263This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2264for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2265/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2266
2267* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2268
2269On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2270works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2271bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2272the Files menu).
2273
2274This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2275due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2276knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2277workaround can be found.
2278
2279* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2280
2281The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2282that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2283fonts, so it does not work.
2284
2285This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2286the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2287emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2288that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2289resources affect Emacs also:
2290
2291 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2292 *Background: scoBackground
2293 *Foreground: scoForeground
2294
2295The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2296Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2297
2298 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2299 Emacs*Background: white
2300 Emacs*Foreground: black
2301
2302(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2303suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2304starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2305environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2306as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2307/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2308but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2309Open Desktop display.
2310
2311These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2312machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2313
2314* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2315
2316This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2317The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2318
2319* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2320
2321This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2322doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2323because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2324libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2325those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2326install them and rebuild Emacs.
2327
2328* Loading fonts is very slow.
2329
2330You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2331Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2332directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2333"fonts.scale".
2334
2335If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2336font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2337
2338With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2339directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2340Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2341
2342* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2343
2344Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2345ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2346lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2347treated as control characters.
2348
2349You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2350releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2351
2352* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2353
2354Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
177c0ea7 2355versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
a933dad1 2356cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
177c0ea7 2357This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
a933dad1 2358processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
177c0ea7
JB
2359
2360Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
a933dad1
DL
2361the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2362
2363The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2364
2365* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2366
2367This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2368C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2369
2370* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2371 segmentation fault and core dump.
2372
2373This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2374added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2375
2376 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2377
2378If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2379untar it :-).
2380
2381* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2382
2383To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2384
2385 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2386
2387and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2388
2389The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2390cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2391
2392* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2393
2394There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2395the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2396workaround/fix is:
2397
2398 cd /lib
2399 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2400 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2401
2402* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2403
2404If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2405with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2406the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2407libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2408toolkit.)
2409
2410If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2411lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2412X11R4, then use it in the link.
2413
2414* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2415
2416This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2417Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2418Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2419where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2420
2421So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2422
2423* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2424
2425This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2426smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2427on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2428problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2429
2430 if ($?EMACS) then
2431 if ($EMACS == "t") then
177c0ea7 2432 unset edit
a933dad1
DL
2433 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2434 endif
2435 endif
2436
2437* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2438parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2439
2440This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2441 emacs*Cursor: black
2442(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2443that isn't a color.)
2444
2445The fix is to correct your X resources.
2446
2447* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2448
2449If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2450_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2451-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2452
2453This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2454extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2455
2456* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2457
2458This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2459to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2460Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2461
2462* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2463
2464This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2465had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2466
2467* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2468
2469If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2470resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2471renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2472font.
2473
2474One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2475your font path, like this:
2476
2477 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2478
2479* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2480
2481An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2482
2483 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2484
2485This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2486individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2487want, rewrite the resource.
2488
2489To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2490-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2491the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2492
2493* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2494
2495On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2496unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2497toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2498libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2499unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2500and Solaris in version 19.29.
2501
2502* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2503
2504This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2505commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2506Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2507hand.
2508
2509* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2510
2511This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2512The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2513such as bash.
2514
2515* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2516
2517A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2518exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2519applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2520communicating through pipes.
2521
2522* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2523
2524Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2525sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2526delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2527program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2528means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2529command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2530obtain the destination address.
2531
2532There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2533In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2534non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
25352.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
25364.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2537have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2538of this writing, these official versions are available:
2539
2540 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2541 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2542 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2543 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2544 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2545
2546 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2547 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2548
2549* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2550
2551 Could not load program emacs
2552 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2553 Error was: Exec format error
2554
2555or this one:
2556
2557 Could not load program .emacs
2558 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2559 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2560 Error was: Exec format error
2561
2562These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2563compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2564
2565* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2566
2567 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2568 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2569
2570This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2571libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2572X11Dev... with smit.
2573
2574* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2575
2576This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2577Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2578character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2579to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2580
2581For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2582
2583 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2584
2585If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2586Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2587xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2588
2589* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2590
2591You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2592though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2593or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2594
2595* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2596
2597These control the actions of Emacs.
2598~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2599EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2600"load" will search.
2601
2602If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2603of them, then try again.
2604
2605* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2606
2607Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2608mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2609the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2610
2611Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2612you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2613operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2614configure script) that reads:
2615#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2616This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2617the kernel bug.
2618
2619* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2620directly with an X server.
2621
2622If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2623does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2624whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2625followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2626it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2627have made the key binding correctly.
2628
2629If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2630be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2631server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2632default.
2633
2634If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2635
2636 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2637 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2638
2639If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2640commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2641are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2642modifier bit not otherwise used.
2643
2644If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2645keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2646some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2647commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2648
2649Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2650into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2651
2652* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2653
2654On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2655file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2656does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2657value is just ten seconds.
2658
2659If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2660
2661* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2662
2663On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2664in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2665expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2666in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2667
2668The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2669anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2670
2671I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2672going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2673Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2674in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2675
2676* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2677
2678Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2679the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2680sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2681
2682* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2683
2684Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2685
2686* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2687the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2688* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2689* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2690
2691This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2692libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2693shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2694similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2695
2696The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2697the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2698
2699The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2700installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2701
2702On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2703
2704If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2705then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2706do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2707or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2708that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2709be careful not to lose the others.
2710
2711Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2712
2713#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2714
2715Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2716the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2717again to say this:
2718
2719#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2720
2721* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2722
177c0ea7 2723 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
a933dad1
DL
2724
2725The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2726
2727The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2728
2729* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2730
2731This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2732with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2733corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2734
2735* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2736
2737People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2738Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2739
2740* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2741
2742christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2743
2744The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
177c0ea7
JB
2745execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2746tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
a933dad1
DL
2747but tty is giving it back 3.
2748
2749The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
177c0ea7 2750word:
a933dad1 2751
177c0ea7 2752if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
a933dad1
DL
2753
2754should be changed to:
2755
177c0ea7 2756if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
a933dad1
DL
2757
2758Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2759and into .login.
2760
2761* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2762
2763Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2764
2765* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2766* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2767
2768One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2769your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2770the environment.
2771
2772* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2773
2774If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2775`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
177c0ea7 2776that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
a933dad1
DL
2777with a floating point option other than the default.
2778
2779It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2780crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2781However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2782floating point option: -fsoft.
2783
2784* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2785
2786The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2787arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2788tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2789
2790I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2791whether this problem is present on a given system.
2792
2793* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2794 as a concentrator.
2795
2796This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
27977 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2798
2799* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2800
2801This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
177c0ea7 2802version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
a933dad1
DL
2803
2804* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2805 terminal type.
2806
2807The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2808environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2809provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2810emulates.
2811
2812Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2813in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2814it only if it is undefined.
2815
2816 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2817
2818Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2819happen in a non-login shell.
2820
2821* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2822
2823People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2824not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2825the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2826the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2827
2828You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2829However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2830you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2831
177c0ea7 2832The easy way to do this is to put
a933dad1
DL
2833
2834 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2835
2836in your site-init.el file.
2837
2838* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2839
2840On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2841may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2842is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2843As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2844
2845* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2846
2847You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2848
2849 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2850
2851This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2852Here is how to make more of them.
2853
2854 % cd /dev
2855 % ls pty*
2856 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2857 % /etc/crpty 8
2858 # creates eight new pty's
2859
2860* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2861
2862This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2863Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2864
2865It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2866space available on the machine.
2867
2868On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2869subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2870for large blocks (many pages).
2871
2872* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2873* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2874* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2875* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2876
2877This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2878fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2879binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2880
2881In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2882It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2883a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2884itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2885when unpacking the shell archive.
2886
2887I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2888what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2889file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2890
2891If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2892nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2893
2894 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2895 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2896 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2897 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2898 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2899 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2900 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2901 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2902 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2903 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2904 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2905 and remake temacs.
2906 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2907
2908* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2909
2910This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2911files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2912space than was allocated.
2913
2914This could be caused by
2915 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2916 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2917 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2918 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2919 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2920 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2921 deleting that file.
2922 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2923 (not from the directory you expected).
2924 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2925 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2926 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2927 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2928 the space required.
2929
2930If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2931of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2932
2933But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2934of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2935problem.
2936
2937* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2938
2939You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2940Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2941will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2942and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2943
2944Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2945than the corresponding .el file.
2946
2947* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2948
2949Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2950
29511) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2952as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2953it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2954value in the man page for a.out (5).
2955
29562) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2957initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2958of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2959not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2960may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2961
2962* Compilation errors on VMS.
2963
2964You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2965variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2966This is not an error. Ignore it.
2967
2968VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2969were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2970
2971There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2972in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2973 char c = -1, d = 1;
2974 int i;
2975
2976 i = d ? c : d;
2977The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2978conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2979constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2980
2981* rmail gets error getting new mail
2982
2983rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2984called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2985the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2986
2987There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2988the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2989`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2990this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2991the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2992IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2993SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2994
2995If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2996prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2997you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2998`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2999
3000 chgrp mail movemail
3001 chmod 2755 movemail
3002
3003If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
3004prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
3005you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
3006`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
3007make install.
3008
3009 chgrp mail movemail
3010 chmod 2755 movemail
3011
3012Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
3013installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
3014installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
3015/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
3016mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
3017directory copy is ineffective.
3018
3019* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
3020
3021This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
3022used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
3023away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
3024streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
3025user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
3026properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
3027input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
3028easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
3029
3030There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
3031
3032 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
3033 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
3034 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
3035
3036First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
3037they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
3038"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
3039escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
3040and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
3041control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
3042
3043Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
3044needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
3045by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
3046rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
3047your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
3048it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
3049the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
3050problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
3051to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
3052
3053For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
3054giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
3055codes. You might as well try it.
3056
3057If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
3058through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
3059computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
3060much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
3061control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
3062you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
3063replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
3064measures can make Emacs semi-work.
3065
3066You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
3067handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
3068enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
3069now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
3070enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
3071control handling.)
3072
3073If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
3074is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
3075other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
3076and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
3077other control characters are already used by emacs.
3078
3079IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
3080Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
3081order to continue.
3082
3083If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
3084certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
3085`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
3086automatically. Here is an example:
3087
3088(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3089
3090If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
3091and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
3092manually.
3093
3094I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
3095assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
3096control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
3097merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
3098widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
3099use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
3100will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
3101of inferior systems.
3102
3103* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
3104
3105For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
3106control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
3107terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
3108that wants to use flow control.
3109
3110You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
3111If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
3112flow control, as described in the preceding section.
3113
3114If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
3115into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
3116shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
3117
3118* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
3119
3120Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
3121control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
3122On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
3123control on the local system.
3124
3125One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
3126(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
3127stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
3128"stty start u stop u" will do this.
3129
3130Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
3131around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
3132issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
3133
3134If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
3135M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
3136if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
3137following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
3138
3139(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3140
3141See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
3142info.
3143
3144* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
3145
3146This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
3147terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
3148the combination of features specified for that terminal.
3149
3150The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
3151Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
3152(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
3153terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
3154what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
3155and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
3156There are several possibilities:
3157
31581) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
3159
3160In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
3161need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
3162
31632) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
3164 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
3165 by termcap.
3166
3167This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
3168Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
3169and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
3170classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
3171Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
3172tested on many kinds of terminals.
3173
31743) The termcap entry is wrong.
3175
3176See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
3177that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
3178for certain terminals.
3179
31804) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
3181 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
3182
3183This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
3184in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
3185
3186* Output from Control-V is slow.
3187
3188On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
3189Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
3190to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
3191before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
3192the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
3193it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
3194
3195If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
3196that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
3197specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
3198concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
3199send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
3200fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
3201time as the operations really take.
3202
3203Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
3204at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
3205terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
3206operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
3207flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
3208an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
3209Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
3210cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
3211not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
3212is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
3213
3214Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
3215multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
3216termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
3217fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
3218each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
3219to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
3220`cm' string.
3221
3222You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
3223has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3224take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3225
3226A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3227of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3228
3229* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3230
3231The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3232
3233 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3234 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3235
3236This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3237
3238* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3239
3240Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3241after a day or two.
3242
3243The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3244the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3245character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3246of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3247overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3248to it.
3249
3250For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3251and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3252other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3253but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3254that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3255important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3256
3257If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3258you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3259 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3260You can probably access help-command via f1.
3261
3262* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3263It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3264but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3265causes it.
3266
3267 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3268 call in the RFS server.
3269
3270 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3271 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3272 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3273 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3274
3275 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3276
3277 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3278 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3279 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3280 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3281 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3282 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3283 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3284
3285 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3286
3287 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3288 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3289 retrieving revision 1.2
3290 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3291 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3292 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3293 ***************
3294 *** 163,169 ****
3295 /*
3296 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3297 */
3298 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3299 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3300 else
3301 {
3302 --- 166,172 ----
3303 /*
3304 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3305 */
3306 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3307 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3308 else
3309 {
3310
3311* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3312
3313You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3314
3315 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3316 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3317
3318These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3319Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3320may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3321on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3322in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3323can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3324that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3325
3326As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3327you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3328can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3329should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3330array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3331 Lisp_Object *args;
3332 ...
3333 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3334putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3335 Lisp_Object *args;
3336 Lisp_Object tem;
3337 ...
3338 tem = args[i];
3339 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3340causes the problem to go away.
3341The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3342so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3343
3344* 68000 C compiler problems
3345
3346Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3347These are some that have been observed.
3348
3349** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3350This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3351if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3352
3353** "cannot reclaim" error.
3354
3355This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3356line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3357simpler expressions.
3358
3359** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3360
3361If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3362Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3363
3364struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3365
3366lose (arg)
3367 struct foo arg;
3368{
3369 test ((int *) arg.y);
3370}
3371
3372If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3373In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3374((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3375
3376This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3377of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3378
3379* C compilers lose on returning unions
3380
3381I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3382Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3383defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3384
3385This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3386of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3387
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fe6b4873
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3389Copyright 1987,88,89,93,94,95,96,97,98,1999,2001,2002
3390 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3391
3392Copying and redistribution of this file with or without modification
3393are permitted without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
3394
53854552
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3395Local variables:
3396mode: outline
3397paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3398end: