More info about fixing problems with colors on a tty.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
4 * Underlines appear at the wrong position.
5
6 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
7 An example is the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1. To
8 circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to
9 nil in your .emacs.
10
11 * Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
12
13 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
14 of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
15 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
16 dates. The preprocessor in those versions expands ".." into ". .",
17 which breaks relative file names that reference the parent directory.
18
19 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
20 `-traditional' option. (The `configure' script does that
21 automatically.)
22
23 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
24 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefile's.
25
26 * Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
27
28 Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
29 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
30 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
31 __MSVCRT__, like so:
32
33 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
34
35 * Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
36
37 The error message might be something like this:
38
39 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
40 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
41 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
42 '0xffffffff'
43 Stop.
44
45 This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
46 which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
47 `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
48 endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
49 or EOL conversions.
50
51 The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
52 change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
53 in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
54 which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
55 mangling them.
56
57 * JPEG images aren't displayed.
58
59 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
60 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
61
62 * Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
63
64 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
65 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
66 patch to assert.h should solve this:
67
68 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
69 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
70 ***************
71 *** 41,47 ****
72 /*
73 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
74 */
75 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
76
77 #else /* debugging enabled */
78
79 --- 41,47 ----
80 /*
81 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
82 */
83 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
84
85 #else /* debugging enabled */
86
87
88 * When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
89 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
90 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
91 problem disappears.
92
93 * Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
94
95 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
96 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
97 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
98
99 * Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
100
101 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
102 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
103 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
104 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
105 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
106 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
107 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
108 "colors".
109
110 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
111 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
112 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
113 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
114 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
115 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
116 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
117 capability).
118
119 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
120 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
121 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
122 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
123
124 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
125 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
126 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
127 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
128 emulator.
129
130 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
131 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
132 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
133 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
134 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
135 `global-font-lock-mode'.
136
137 * Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
138
139 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
140 emulation for which it is set up.
141
142 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
143 Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
144 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
145 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
146 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
147 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
148 menu placement.
149
150 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
151 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
152 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
153 developers.
154
155 * Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
156
157 Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
158 and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
159
160 There are problems with display if the variable `redisplay-dont-pause'
161 is set to nil (w32-win.el sets it to t by default, to avoid these
162 problems). The problems include:
163
164 . No redisplay as long as help echo is displayed in the echo area,
165 e.g. if the mouse is on a mouse-sensitive part of the mode line.
166
167 . When the mode line is dragged with the mouse, multiple copies of the
168 mode line are left behind, until the mouse button is released and
169 the next input event occurs.
170
171 . Window contents are not updated when text is selected by dragging
172 the mouse, and the mouse is dragged below the bottom line of the
173 window. When the mouse button is released, the window display is
174 correctly updated.
175
176 Again, these problems only occur if `redisplay-dont-pause' is nil.
177
178 Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
179 characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
180
181 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
182 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
183
184 Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
185 These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
186 the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
187 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
188 work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
189 you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
190 the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
191 ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
192 appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
193 yet.)
194
195 Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
196 applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
197 is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
198 but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
199 means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
200 Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
201 Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
202 set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
203
204 * The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
205
206 This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
207 libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
208 install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
209 where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
210 probably isn't limited to that system.
211
212 You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
213 and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
214 which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
215 which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
216 generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
217
218 (If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
219 libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
220
221 * Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
222
223 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
224 (RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
225 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
226 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
227 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
228 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
229 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
230 Emacs excutable to fail with the above message.
231
232 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
233 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
234 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
235 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
236
237 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
238 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
239 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
240 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
241 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
242 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
243 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
244 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
245 `/etc/auto.home'.
246
247 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
248 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
249 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
250 to work around the problem.
251
252 * Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
253
254 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
255 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
256 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
257 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
258 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
259 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
260
261 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
262
263 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
264
265 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
266 problem.
267
268 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
269 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
270 `xset fp rehash'.
271
272 * Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
273 src/s/hpux10.h.
274
275 * Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
276 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
277
278 * Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
279
280 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
281 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
282 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
283 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
284 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
285
286 * The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
287 with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
288 fixed in W3's CVS. This patch is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46 work:
289
290 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
291 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
292 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
293 @@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
294 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
295 (error nil))))
296 (t
297 - (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
298 + ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
299 + (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
300 (condition-case ()
301 (progn
302 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
303 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
304 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
305 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
306 @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
307 +;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
308 +;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
309 +
310 +(require 'w3-e19)
311 +(provide 'w3-e21)
312
313
314 * On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
315 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
316 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
317 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
318
319 * The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
320 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
321 longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.2 fix that.
322
323 --- psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:23:31 1.1
324 +++ psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:24:22
325 @@ -264,4 +264,4 @@
326 ; inhibit-read-only
327 - (before-change-function nil)
328 - (after-change-function nil))
329 + (before-change-functions nil)
330 + (after-change-functions nil))
331 (setq selective-display t)
332 @@ -1544,3 +1544,3 @@
333 (buffer-read-only nil)
334 - (before-change-function nil)
335 + (before-change-functions nil)
336 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
337 @@ -1596,3 +1596,3 @@
338 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
339 - (let (before-change-function
340 + (let (before-change-functions
341 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
342 @@ -1613,3 +1613,3 @@
343 (re-found nil)
344 - before-change-function)
345 + before-change-functions)
346 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
347 @@ -1646,3 +1646,3 @@
348 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
349 - (let ((before-change-function nil))
350 + (let ((before-change-functions nil))
351 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
352 --- psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:23:42 1.1
353 +++ psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:30:05
354 @@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
355 (require 'easymenu)
356 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
357
358 @@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
359 (let ((submenu
360 - (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
361 - sgml-max-menu-size))))
362 +;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
363 +;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
364 + (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
365 + (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
366 + sgml-max-menu-size))
367 + new) nil)
368 + new)))
369 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
370 @@ -113,9 +119,10 @@
371 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
372 - (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
373 - (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
374 (after-change-functions nil)
375 - (before-change-functions nil))
376 + (before-change-functions nil)
377 + (modified (buffer-modified-p))
378 + (buffer-undo-list t)
379 + deactivate-mark)
380 (put-text-property start end 'face face)
381 - (when (< start end)
382 - (put-text-property (1- end) end 'rear-nonsticky '(face)))))
383 + (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
384 + (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
385 (t
386 --- psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:23:57 1.1
387 +++ psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:29:56
388 @@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
389
390 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
391 +
392 \f
393 @@ -2493,8 +2495,8 @@
394 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
395 - (when after-change-function ;***
396 - (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
397 + (when after-change-functions ;***
398 + (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
399 (current-buffer)
400 - after-change-function)
401 - (setq before-change-function nil
402 - after-change-function nil))
403 + after-change-functions)
404 + (setq before-change-functions nil
405 + after-change-functions nil))
406 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
407 @@ -2878,6 +2880,5 @@
408 "Set initial state of parsing"
409 - (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
410 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
411 - (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
412 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
413 + (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
414 + (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
415 + '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
416 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
417 @@ -3925,7 +3926,7 @@
418 (sgml-need-dtd)
419 - (unless before-change-function
420 - (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
421 + (unless before-change-functions
422 + (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
423 (current-buffer))
424 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
425 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change))
426 + (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
427 + (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change)))
428 (sgml-with-parser-syntax-ro
429
430 * The Calc package fails to build and signals errors with Emacs 21.
431
432 Apply the following patches which reportedly fix several problems:
433
434 --- calc-ext.el.~1~ Sun Apr 3 02:26:34 1994
435 +++ calc-ext.el Wed Sep 18 17:35:01 1996
436 @@ -1354,6 +1354,25 @@
437 (calc-fancy-prefix 'calc-inverse-flag "Inverse..." n)
438 )
439
440 +(defconst calc-fancy-prefix-map
441 + (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
442 + (define-key map [t] 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
443 + (define-key map (vector meta-prefix-char t) 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
444 + (define-key map [switch-frame] nil)
445 + (define-key map [?\C-u] 'universal-argument)
446 + (define-key map [?0] 'digit-argument)
447 + (define-key map [?1] 'digit-argument)
448 + (define-key map [?2] 'digit-argument)
449 + (define-key map [?3] 'digit-argument)
450 + (define-key map [?4] 'digit-argument)
451 + (define-key map [?5] 'digit-argument)
452 + (define-key map [?6] 'digit-argument)
453 + (define-key map [?7] 'digit-argument)
454 + (define-key map [?8] 'digit-argument)
455 + (define-key map [?9] 'digit-argument)
456 + map)
457 + "Keymap used while processing calc-fancy-prefix.")
458 +
459 (defun calc-fancy-prefix (flag msg n)
460 (let (prefix)
461 (calc-wrapper
462 @@ -1364,6 +1383,8 @@
463 (message (if prefix msg "")))
464 (and prefix
465 (not calc-is-keypad-press)
466 + (if (boundp 'overriding-terminal-local-map)
467 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map calc-fancy-prefix-map)
468 (let ((event (calc-read-key t)))
469 (if (eq (setq last-command-char (car event)) ?\C-u)
470 (universal-argument)
471 @@ -1376,9 +1397,18 @@
472 (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
473 (eq last-command-char ?-))
474 (calc-unread-command)
475 - (digit-argument n))))))
476 + (digit-argument n)))))))
477 )
478 (setq calc-is-keypad-press nil)
479 +
480 +(defun calc-fancy-prefix-other-key (arg)
481 + (interactive "P")
482 + (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
483 + (and (>= last-command-char 0) (< last-command-char ? )
484 + (not (eq last-command-char meta-prefix-char))))
485 + (calc-wrapper)) ; clear flags if not a Calc command.
486 + (calc-unread-command)
487 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map nil))
488
489 (defun calc-invert-func ()
490 (save-excursion
491
492 --- Makefile.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:45 1996
493 +++ Makefile Thu Nov 30 15:09:45 2000
494 @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
495
496 # Other macros.
497 EFLAGS = -batch
498 -MAINT = -l calc-maint.elc
499 +MAINT = -l calc-maint.el
500
501 # Control whether intermediate files are kept.
502 PURGE = -rm -f
503 @@ -154,10 +154,7 @@
504
505
506 # All this because "-l calc-maint" doesn't work.
507 -maint: calc-maint.elc
508 -calc-maint.elc: calc-maint.el
509 - cp calc-maint.el calc-maint.elc
510 -
511 +maint: calc-maint.el
512
513 # Create an Emacs TAGS file
514 tags: TAGS
515
516 --- calc-aent.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:36 1996
517 +++ calc-aent.el Tue Nov 21 18:34:33 2000
518 @@ -385,7 +385,7 @@
519 (calc-minibuffer-contains
520 "\\`\\([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\"\\)*[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\\'"))
521 (insert "`")
522 - (setq alg-exp (buffer-string))
523 + (setq alg-exp (field-string))
524 (and (> (length alg-exp) 0) (setq calc-previous-alg-entry alg-exp))
525 (exit-minibuffer))
526 )
527 @@ -393,14 +393,14 @@
528
529 (defun calcAlg-enter ()
530 (interactive)
531 - (let* ((str (buffer-string))
532 + (let* ((str (field-string))
533 (exp (and (> (length str) 0)
534 (save-excursion
535 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
536 (math-read-exprs str)))))
537 (if (eq (car-safe exp) 'error)
538 (progn
539 - (goto-char (point-min))
540 + (goto-char (field-beginning))
541 (forward-char (nth 1 exp))
542 (beep)
543 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message
544 @@ -455,14 +455,14 @@
545 (interactive)
546 (if (calc-minibuffer-contains ".*[@oh] *[^'m ]+[^'m]*\\'")
547 (calcDigit-key)
548 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
549 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
550 (exit-minibuffer))
551 )
552
553 (defun calcDigit-edit ()
554 (interactive)
555 (calc-unread-command)
556 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
557 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
558 (exit-minibuffer)
559 )
560
561 --- calc.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:47 1996
562 +++ calc.el Wed Nov 22 13:08:49 2000
563 @@ -2051,11 +2051,11 @@
564 ;; Exercise for the reader: Figure out why this is a good precaution!
565 (or (boundp 'calc-buffer)
566 (use-local-map minibuffer-local-map))
567 - (let ((str (buffer-string)))
568 + (let ((str (field-string)))
569 (setq calc-digit-value (save-excursion
570 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
571 (math-read-number str))))
572 - (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (buffer-size) 0))
573 + (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (field-end) (field-beginning)))
574 (progn
575 (beep)
576 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message " [Bad format]"))
577 @@ -2071,7 +2071,7 @@
578
579 (defun calc-minibuffer-contains (rex)
580 (save-excursion
581 - (goto-char (point-min))
582 + (goto-char (field-end (point-min)))
583 (looking-at rex))
584 )
585
586 @@ -2158,10 +2158,8 @@
587 (upcase last-command-char))))
588 (and dig
589 (< dig radix)))))))
590 - (save-excursion
591 - (goto-char (point-min))
592 - (looking-at
593 - "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'")))
594 + (calc-minibuffer-contains
595 + "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'"))
596 (if (and (memq last-command-char '(?@ ?o ?h ?\' ?m))
597 (string-match " " calc-hms-format))
598 (insert " "))
599 @@ -2190,7 +2188,7 @@
600 ((eq last-command 'calcDigit-start)
601 (erase-buffer))
602 (t (backward-delete-char 1)))
603 - (if (= (buffer-size) 0)
604 + (if (= (field-beginning) (field-end))
605 (progn
606 (setq last-command-char 13)
607 (calcDigit-nondigit)))
608
609 * TeX'ing the Calc manual fails.
610
611 The following patches allow to build the Calc manual using texinfo.tex
612 from Emacs 19.34 distribution:
613
614 *** calc-maint.e~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:26 1996
615 --- calc-maint.el Sun Dec 10 14:32:38 2000
616 ***************
617 *** 308,314 ****
618 (insert "@tex\n"
619 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
620 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
621 ! (setq midpos (point))
622 (insert "@end tex\n")
623 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
624 (insert "@bye\n")
625 --- 308,314 ----
626 (insert "@tex\n"
627 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
628 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
629 ! (setq midpos (point-marker))
630 (insert "@end tex\n")
631 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
632 (insert "@bye\n")
633 *** Makefile.~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:24 1996
634 --- Makefile Sun Dec 10 14:44:00 2000
635 ***************
636 *** 98,106 ****
637 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
638 tex:
639 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
640 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
641 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
642 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
643 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
644 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
645 $(PURGE) calc.toc
646 --- 98,106 ----
647 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
648 tex:
649 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
650 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
651 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
652 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
653 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
654 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
655 $(PURGE) calc.toc
656 *** calc.texinfo.~1~ Thu Oct 10 18:18:56 1996
657 --- calc.texinfo Mon Dec 11 08:25:00 2000
658 ***************
659 *** 12,17 ****
660 --- 12,19 ----
661 % Because makeinfo.c exists, we can't just define new commands.
662 % So instead, we take over little-used existing commands.
663 %
664 + % Suggested by Karl Berry <karl@@freefriends.org>
665 + \gdef\!{\mskip-\thinmuskip}
666 % Redefine @cite{text} to act like $text$ in regular TeX.
667 % Info will typeset this same as @samp{text}.
668 \gdef\goodtex{\tex \let\rm\goodrm \let\t\ttfont \turnoffactive}
669 ***************
670 *** 23686,23692 ****
671 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
672 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
673 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
674 ! to move this vector to the stack; @pxref{Trail Commands}.)
675
676 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
677 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
678 --- 23689,23695 ----
679 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
680 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
681 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
682 ! to move this vector to the stack; see @ref{Trail Commands}.)
683
684 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
685 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
686
687 * Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
688
689 As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
690 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
691 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
692 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
693 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
694 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
695 text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
696 into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
697 buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
698
699 To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
700
701 * The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
702
703 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
704 slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
705 e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
706 Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
707 correctly by Emacs 21.
708
709 * On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
710 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
711 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
712 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
713 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
714
715 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
716 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
717 can be found.
718
719 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
720 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
721 specified run-time search path in the executable.
722
723 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
724
725 * On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
726 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
727 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
728 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
729 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
730 and the default CFLAGS.
731
732 * Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
733
734 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
735 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
736 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.3
737 with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other systems as well. To
738 avoid this problem, switch to using the standard ftp client. On a
739 Debian system, type
740
741 update-alternatives --config ftpd
742
743 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
744
745 * On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
746
747 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
748 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
749 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
750 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
751
752 * Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
753 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
754 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
755 seen.
756
757 * On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
758 remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
759 keyboard(5).
760
761 Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
762 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
763 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
764
765 * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
766
767 Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
768 It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
769 system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
770 the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
771
772 * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
773
774 This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
775 assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
776 To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
777 or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
778 Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
779
780 * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
781
782 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
783
784 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
785 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
786 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
787 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
788 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
789 /******************************************************************
790
791 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
792 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
793 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
794 XLCd lcd;
795 {
796 - char* begin;
797 - char* end;
798 + char* begin = NULL;
799 + char* end = NULL;
800 char* ret;
801 int i = 0;
802 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
803 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
804 }
805 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
806 if (ret != NULL) {
807 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
808 + if (begin != NULL) {
809 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
810 + } else {
811 + ret[0] = '\0';
812 + }
813 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
814 }
815 return ret;
816
817
818 * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
819
820 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
821
822 * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
823
824 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
825 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
826
827 * The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
828
829 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
830 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
831 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
832 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
833 purposes.
834
835 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
836 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
837
838 * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
839 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
840
841 You can fix this by editing the file:
842
843 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
844
845 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
846
847 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
848
849 that should read:
850
851 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
852
853 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
854
855 * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
856 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
857
858 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
859 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
860
861 * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
862
863 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
864 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
865 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
866
867 * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
868
869 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
870 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
871 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
872 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
873 change this.
874
875 * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
876
877 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
878 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
879 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
880 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
881 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
882
883 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
884 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
885
886 * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
887
888 This problem manifests itself as an error message
889
890 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
891
892 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
893 were built for an older system version,
894
895 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
896
897 made the problem go away.
898
899 * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
900
901 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
902 as of 8 Dec 1998.
903
904 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
905
906 * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
907 the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
908 next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
909
910 * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
911
912 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
913 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
914 likely to cause it.
915
916 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
917
918 * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
919
920 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
921
922 * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
923
924 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
925
926 * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
927 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
928 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
929 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
930
931 * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
932 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
933 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
934 earlier versions.
935
936 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
937 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
938 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
939 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
940 (cond
941 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
942 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
943 + (insert-file-contents entity)
944 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
945 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
946 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
947
948 * Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
949
950 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
951 these problems.
952
953 * Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
954 about a read-only tex output buffer.
955
956 This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
957 versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
958 package.
959
960 diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
961 *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
962 --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
963 ***************
964 *** 545,551 ****
965 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
966 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
967 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
968 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
969 (set-buffer buffer)
970 (if dir (cd dir))
971 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
972 - --- 545,552 ----
973 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
974 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
975 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
976 ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
977 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
978 (set-buffer buffer)
979 (if dir (cd dir))
980 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
981
982 * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
983 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
984
985 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
986
987 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
988 003082 August 11, 1998.
989
990 * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
991
992 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
993 (standard-display-european t)
994 That should be changed to
995 (standard-display-european 1 t)
996
997 * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
998
999 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1000 supplies the `install-info' command.
1001
1002 * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1003
1004 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1005 rights, containing this text:
1006
1007 --------------------------------
1008 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1009 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1010 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1011 EOF
1012
1013 xmodmap - << EOF
1014 clear mod1
1015 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1016 add mod1 = Meta_L
1017 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1018 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1019 EOF
1020 --------------------------------
1021
1022 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1023 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1024 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1025
1026 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1027 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1028 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1029
1030 * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1031
1032 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1033 for character composition.
1034
1035 * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1036
1037 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1038 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1039 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
1040
1041 127.0.0.1 localhost
1042 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1043
1044 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1045
1046 * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1047
1048 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1049 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1050 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1051 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1052 in Emacs.
1053
1054 * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1055
1056 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1057 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1058 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1059 support for 8-bit characters.
1060
1061 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1062 this at your shell's prompt:
1063
1064 ispell -vv
1065
1066 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1067 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1068 does not.
1069
1070 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1071 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1072 Then rebuild the speller.
1073
1074 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1075 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1076
1077 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1078 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1079 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1080 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1081 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
1082
1083 * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1084 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1085
1086 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1087 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1088 known to work.
1089
1090 * On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1091 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1092
1093 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1094
1095 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1096 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1097 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1098 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1099 AltGr has been pressed.
1100
1101 * Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1102
1103 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1104 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1105 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1106 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1107
1108 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1109 well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1110
1111 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1112 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1113 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1114 selection".
1115
1116 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1117 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1118 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1119 here.
1120
1121 * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1122
1123 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1124 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1125 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1126 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1127 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1128 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1129 are currently recommended for your host.
1130
1131 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1132 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1133 105284-18 might fix it again.
1134
1135 * On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1136
1137 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1138 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1139 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1140 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
1141
1142 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1143 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1144 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1145 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1146 should do.
1147
1148 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1149 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1150 libraries.
1151
1152 * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1153
1154 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1155 either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1156 calls for specifying this.
1157
1158 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1159 mail-host-address to the value you want.
1160
1161 * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1162
1163 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1164 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1165 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1166 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1167 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1168 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1169
1170 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1171 But you have to be root to do it.
1172
1173 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1174
1175 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1176 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1177 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1178 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1179 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1180
1181 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1182 These changes take effect when you reboot.
1183
1184 * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1185
1186 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1187 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1188 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1189 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1190
1191 Here's how to do this:
1192
1193 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1194
1195 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1196 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1197 to normal, do
1198
1199 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1200
1201 * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1202
1203 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1204 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1205 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1206
1207 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1208 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1209 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1210
1211 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1212 display all the characters Emacs supports.
1213
1214 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1215 missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1216 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1217 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1218 of this character to display a space.
1219
1220 * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1221
1222 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1223
1224 * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1225
1226 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1227 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1228 lines do not overlap.
1229
1230 * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1231 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1232
1233 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1234 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1235 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1236
1237 * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1238 directories that have the +t bit.
1239
1240 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1241 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1242 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1243 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1244
1245 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1246 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1247
1248 * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1249 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1250
1251 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1252
1253 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1254
1255 * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1256 appear on disk.
1257
1258 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1259 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1260 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1261 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1262 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1263 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1264
1265 * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1266
1267 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1268 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1269 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1270 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1271 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1272 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1273
1274 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1275 them to two different keys.
1276
1277 * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1278
1279 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1280 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1281
1282 * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1283
1284 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1285 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1286 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1287 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1288 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1289 old POP protocol.
1290
1291 * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1292
1293 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1294 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1295 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1296 happens to exist on your X server).
1297
1298 * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1299
1300 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1301 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1302 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1303
1304 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1305 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1306
1307 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1308
1309 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1310 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1311 does not happen.
1312
1313 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1314
1315 We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1316 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1317 makes the problem stop:
1318
1319 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1320 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1321 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1322 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1323
1324 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1325 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1326
1327 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1328 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1329 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1330
1331 * Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1332
1333 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1334 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1335
1336 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1337 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1338 with the user.
1339
1340 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1341 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1342 communicate with the subprocess.
1343
1344 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1345 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1346 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1347 stdin.
1348
1349 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1350
1351 For Perl 4:
1352
1353 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1354 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1355 ***************
1356 *** 68,74 ****
1357 $rcfile=".perldb";
1358 }
1359 else {
1360 ! $console = "con";
1361 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1362 }
1363
1364 --- 68,74 ----
1365 $rcfile=".perldb";
1366 }
1367 else {
1368 ! $console = "";
1369 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1370 }
1371
1372
1373 For Perl 5:
1374 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1375 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1376 ***************
1377 *** 22,28 ****
1378 $rcfile=".perldb";
1379 }
1380 elsif (-e "con") {
1381 ! $console = "con";
1382 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1383 }
1384 else {
1385 --- 22,28 ----
1386 $rcfile=".perldb";
1387 }
1388 elsif (-e "con") {
1389 ! $console = "";
1390 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1391 }
1392 else {
1393
1394 * Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1395
1396 Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1397 others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1398
1399 When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1400 hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1401 by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1402 finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1403 instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1404 can find out the process id.
1405
1406 It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1407 M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1408 start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1409 programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1410 work.
1411
1412 * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1413
1414 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1415
1416 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1417 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1418 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1419
1420 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1421 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1422 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1423 incorrect library functions.
1424
1425 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1426
1427 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1428 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1429 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1430 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1431 the front of your PATH environment variable.
1432
1433 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1434 like make-docfile.
1435
1436 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1437 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1438 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1439 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1440
1441 * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1442 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
1443 (Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
1444 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1445 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
1446 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.)
1447
1448 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1449 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1450 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1451 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1452 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1453 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1454 explains this issue in more detail.
1455
1456 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1457
1458 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1459
1460 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1461 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1462 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1463 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1464 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1465 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1466 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1467 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1468 your system works as before.
1469
1470 * On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1471
1472 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1473 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1474
1475 * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1476
1477 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1478 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1479 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1480
1481 * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1482
1483 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1484 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1485 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1486 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1487 does not work with this version of ncurses.
1488
1489 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1490
1491 * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1492
1493 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1494 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1495 as GCC.
1496
1497 * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1498 on GNU/Linux systems.
1499
1500 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
1501 1.3.75.
1502
1503 * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1504
1505 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1506 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1507 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1508 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1509
1510 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1511
1512 * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1513
1514 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1515 version of Solaris that you are using.
1516
1517 * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1518
1519 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1520 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1521 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1522 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1523 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1524
1525 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1526 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1527 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1528 for certain.
1529
1530 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1531 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1532 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1533
1534 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1535 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1536
1537 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1538 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1539
1540 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1541 Solaris 2.5.
1542
1543 * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1544
1545 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1546 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1547 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1548
1549 * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1550 Emacs built with Motif.
1551
1552 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1553 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1554
1555 * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1556
1557 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1558 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1559 find that string, and take out the spaces.
1560
1561 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1562
1563 * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1564
1565 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1566 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1567 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1568 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1569 command `swap -l'.
1570
1571 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1572 line like this:
1573
1574 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1575
1576 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1577 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1578 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1579 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1580 information.
1581
1582 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1583 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1584 on the network that can log on to the host.
1585
1586 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1587 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1588 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1589 icons.
1590
1591 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1592 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1593 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1594 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1595
1596 * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1597 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1598
1599 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1600 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1601 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1602
1603 * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1604
1605 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1606 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1607 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1608 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1609
1610 * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1611 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
1612
1613 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1614
1615 * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1616 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1617
1618 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1619 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1620 Definitions" to make them defined.
1621
1622 * On SunOS, you get linker errors
1623 ld: Undefined symbol
1624 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1625 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1626
1627 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1628 or link libXmu statically.
1629
1630 * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1631 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1632 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1633
1634 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1635 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1636 you build Emacs:
1637
1638 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1639 chmod 664 libIM.a
1640 ranlib libIM.a
1641
1642 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1643 Makefile).
1644
1645 * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1646
1647 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1648 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1649
1650 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1651
1652 * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1653 Windows.
1654
1655 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1656 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1657 problem.
1658
1659 * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1660
1661 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1662 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1663 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1664 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1665 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1666
1667 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1668 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1669 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1670 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1671
1672 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1673 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1674 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1675 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1676 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1677
1678 * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1679
1680 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1681 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1682
1683 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1684
1685 * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1686
1687 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1688 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1689 Emacs's configure script.
1690
1691 * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1692
1693 This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1694 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1695 configure script.
1696
1697 * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1698
1699 If you get errors such as
1700
1701 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1702 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1703 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1704
1705 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1706 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1707 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1708 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1709 ones available when you build Emacs.
1710
1711 * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1712 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1713
1714 This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1715 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1716 configures the X server.
1717
1718 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1719 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1720 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1721 EOF
1722
1723 xmodmap - << EOF
1724 clear mod1
1725 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1726 add mod1 = Meta_L
1727 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1728 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1729 EOF
1730
1731 * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1732
1733 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1734 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1735 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1736 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1737 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1738
1739 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1740
1741 * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1742
1743 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1744 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1745
1746 * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1747
1748 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1749 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1750 to allocate ptys reliably.
1751
1752 * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1753
1754 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1755 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1756 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1757 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1758 syms.h.
1759
1760 * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1761
1762 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1763 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1764
1765 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1766 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1767 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1768 networked and non-networked machines.
1769
1770 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1771
1772 ** Networked Case
1773
1774 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1775 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1776 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1777
1778 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1779
1780 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1781 lines:
1782
1783 order hosts, bind
1784 multi on
1785
1786 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1787 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1788 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1789 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1790
1791 ** Non-Networked Case
1792
1793 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1794 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1795 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1796 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1797 file is not necessary with this approach.
1798
1799 * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1800 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1801
1802 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1803 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1804
1805 #if ThreadedX
1806 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1807 #endif
1808
1809 to:
1810
1811 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1812 #if ThreadedX
1813 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1814 #endif
1815 #endif
1816
1817 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1818 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1819 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1820 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1821 definition for your type of machine and system.
1822
1823 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1824 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1825 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1826
1827 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1828 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1829 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1830 patch.
1831
1832 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1833 he changed
1834 #define ThreadedX YES
1835 to
1836 #define ThreadedX NO
1837 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1838 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1839 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1840
1841 * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1842 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1843
1844 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1845 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1846 another escape character in kermit. One user did
1847
1848 set escape-character 17
1849
1850 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1851
1852 * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1853
1854 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1855
1856 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1857
1858 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1859 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1860 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1861 the resource prevents the problem.
1862
1863 * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1864
1865 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1866 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1867
1868 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1869 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1870 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1871 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1872 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1873
1874 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1875 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1876
1877 * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1878
1879 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1880 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1881 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1882 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1883 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1884 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1885 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1886 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1887 not to work.
1888
1889 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
1890 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
1891 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
1892 same directory where system header files are kept.
1893
1894 * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
1895
1896 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
1897 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
1898 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
1899 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
1900 described in the Solaris FAQ
1901 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
1902 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
1903
1904 * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
1905
1906 This shell command should fix it:
1907
1908 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
1909
1910 * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
1911
1912 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
1913 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
1914 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
1915 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
1916 GCC.
1917
1918 * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
1919
1920 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
1921 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
1922 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
1923
1924 * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1925
1926 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1927 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1928 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1929 the Files menu).
1930
1931 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1932 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1933 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1934 workaround can be found.
1935
1936 * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
1937
1938 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
1939 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
1940 fonts, so it does not work.
1941
1942 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
1943 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
1944 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
1945 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
1946 resources affect Emacs also:
1947
1948 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
1949 *Background: scoBackground
1950 *Foreground: scoForeground
1951
1952 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
1953 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
1954
1955 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
1956 Emacs*Background: white
1957 Emacs*Foreground: black
1958
1959 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
1960 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
1961 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
1962 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
1963 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
1964 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
1965 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
1966 Open Desktop display.
1967
1968 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
1969 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
1970
1971 * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
1972
1973 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
1974 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
1975
1976 * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
1977
1978 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
1979 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
1980 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
1981 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
1982 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
1983 install them and rebuild Emacs.
1984
1985 * Loading fonts is very slow.
1986
1987 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
1988 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
1989 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
1990 "fonts.scale".
1991
1992 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
1993 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
1994
1995 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
1996 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
1997 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
1998
1999 * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2000
2001 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2002 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2003 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2004 treated as control characters.
2005
2006 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2007 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2008
2009 * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2010
2011 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2012 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2013 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2014 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2015 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2016
2017 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2018 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2019
2020 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2021
2022 * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2023
2024 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2025 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2026
2027 * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2028 segmentation fault and core dump.
2029
2030 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2031 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2032
2033 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2034
2035 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2036 untar it :-).
2037
2038 * Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2039
2040 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2041
2042 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2043
2044 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2045
2046 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2047 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2048
2049 * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2050
2051 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2052 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2053 workaround/fix is:
2054
2055 cd /lib
2056 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2057 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2058
2059 * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2060
2061 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2062 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2063 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2064 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2065 toolkit.)
2066
2067 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2068 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2069 X11R4, then use it in the link.
2070
2071 * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2072
2073 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2074 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2075 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2076 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2077
2078 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2079
2080 * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2081
2082 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2083 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2084 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2085 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2086
2087 if ($?EMACS) then
2088 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2089 unset edit
2090 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2091 endif
2092 endif
2093
2094 * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2095 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2096
2097 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2098 emacs*Cursor: black
2099 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2100 that isn't a color.)
2101
2102 The fix is to correct your X resources.
2103
2104 * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2105
2106 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2107 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2108 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2109
2110 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2111 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2112
2113 * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2114
2115 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2116 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2117 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2118
2119 * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2120
2121 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2122 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2123
2124 * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2125
2126 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2127 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2128 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2129 font.
2130
2131 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2132 your font path, like this:
2133
2134 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2135
2136 * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2137
2138 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2139
2140 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2141
2142 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2143 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2144 want, rewrite the resource.
2145
2146 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2147 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2148 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2149
2150 * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2151
2152 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2153 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2154 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2155 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2156 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2157 and Solaris in version 19.29.
2158
2159 * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2160
2161 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2162 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2163 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2164 hand.
2165
2166 * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2167
2168 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2169 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2170 such as bash.
2171
2172 * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2173
2174 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2175 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2176 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2177 communicating through pipes.
2178
2179 * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2180
2181 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2182 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2183 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2184 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2185 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2186 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2187 obtain the destination address.
2188
2189 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2190 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2191 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
2192 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
2193 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2194 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2195 of this writing, these official versions are available:
2196
2197 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2198 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2199 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2200 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2201 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2202
2203 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2204 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2205
2206 * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2207
2208 Could not load program emacs
2209 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2210 Error was: Exec format error
2211
2212 or this one:
2213
2214 Could not load program .emacs
2215 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2216 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2217 Error was: Exec format error
2218
2219 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2220 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2221
2222 * On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2223
2224 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2225 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2226
2227 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2228 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2229 X11Dev... with smit.
2230
2231 * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2232
2233 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2234 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2235 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2236 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2237
2238 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2239
2240 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2241
2242 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2243 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2244 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2245
2246 * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2247
2248 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2249 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2250 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2251
2252 * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2253
2254 These control the actions of Emacs.
2255 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2256 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2257 "load" will search.
2258
2259 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2260 of them, then try again.
2261
2262 * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2263
2264 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2265 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2266 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2267
2268 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2269 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2270 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2271 configure script) that reads:
2272 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2273 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2274 the kernel bug.
2275
2276 * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2277 directly with an X server.
2278
2279 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2280 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2281 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2282 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2283 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2284 have made the key binding correctly.
2285
2286 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2287 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2288 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2289 default.
2290
2291 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2292
2293 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2294 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2295
2296 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2297 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2298 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2299 modifier bit not otherwise used.
2300
2301 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2302 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2303 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2304 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2305
2306 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2307 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2308
2309 * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2310
2311 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2312 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2313 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2314 value is just ten seconds.
2315
2316 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2317
2318 * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2319
2320 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2321 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2322 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2323 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2324
2325 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2326 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2327
2328 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2329 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2330 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2331 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2332
2333 * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2334
2335 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2336 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2337 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2338
2339 * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2340
2341 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2342
2343 * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2344 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2345 * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2346 * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2347
2348 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2349 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2350 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2351 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2352
2353 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2354 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2355
2356 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2357 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2358
2359 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2360
2361 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2362 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2363 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2364 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2365 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2366 be careful not to lose the others.
2367
2368 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2369
2370 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2371
2372 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2373 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2374 again to say this:
2375
2376 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2377
2378 * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2379
2380 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2381
2382 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2383
2384 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2385
2386 * Self documentation messages are garbled.
2387
2388 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2389 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2390 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2391
2392 * Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2393
2394 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2395 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2396
2397 * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2398
2399 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2400
2401 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2402 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2403 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2404 but tty is giving it back 3.
2405
2406 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2407 word:
2408
2409 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2410
2411 should be changed to:
2412
2413 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2414
2415 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2416 and into .login.
2417
2418 * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2419
2420 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2421
2422 * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2423 * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2424
2425 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2426 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2427 the environment.
2428
2429 * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2430
2431 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2432 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2433 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2434 with a floating point option other than the default.
2435
2436 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2437 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2438 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2439 floating point option: -fsoft.
2440
2441 * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2442
2443 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2444 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2445 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2446
2447 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2448 whether this problem is present on a given system.
2449
2450 * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2451 as a concentrator.
2452
2453 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
2454 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2455
2456 * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2457
2458 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2459 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2460
2461 * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2462 terminal type.
2463
2464 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2465 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2466 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2467 emulates.
2468
2469 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2470 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2471 it only if it is undefined.
2472
2473 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2474
2475 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2476 happen in a non-login shell.
2477
2478 * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2479
2480 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2481 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2482 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2483 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2484
2485 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2486 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2487 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2488
2489 The easy way to do this is to put
2490
2491 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2492
2493 in your site-init.el file.
2494
2495 * Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2496
2497 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2498 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2499 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2500 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2501
2502 * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2503
2504 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2505
2506 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2507
2508 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2509 Here is how to make more of them.
2510
2511 % cd /dev
2512 % ls pty*
2513 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2514 % /etc/crpty 8
2515 # creates eight new pty's
2516
2517 * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2518
2519 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2520 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2521
2522 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2523 space available on the machine.
2524
2525 On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2526 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2527 for large blocks (many pages).
2528
2529 * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2530 * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2531 * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2532 * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2533
2534 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2535 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2536 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2537
2538 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2539 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2540 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2541 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2542 when unpacking the shell archive.
2543
2544 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2545 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2546 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2547
2548 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2549 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2550
2551 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2552 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2553 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2554 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2555 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2556 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2557 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2558 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2559 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2560 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2561 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2562 and remake temacs.
2563 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2564
2565 * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2566
2567 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2568 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2569 space than was allocated.
2570
2571 This could be caused by
2572 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2573 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2574 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2575 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2576 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2577 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2578 deleting that file.
2579 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2580 (not from the directory you expected).
2581 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2582 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2583 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2584 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2585 the space required.
2586
2587 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2588 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2589
2590 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2591 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2592 problem.
2593
2594 * Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2595
2596 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2597 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2598 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2599 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2600
2601 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2602 than the corresponding .el file.
2603
2604 * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2605
2606 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2607
2608 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2609 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2610 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2611 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2612
2613 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2614 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2615 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2616 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2617 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2618
2619 * Compilation errors on VMS.
2620
2621 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2622 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2623 This is not an error. Ignore it.
2624
2625 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2626 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2627
2628 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2629 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2630 char c = -1, d = 1;
2631 int i;
2632
2633 i = d ? c : d;
2634 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2635 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2636 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2637
2638 * rmail gets error getting new mail
2639
2640 rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2641 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2642 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2643
2644 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2645 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2646 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2647 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2648 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2649 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2650 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2651
2652 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2653 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2654 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2655 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2656
2657 chgrp mail movemail
2658 chmod 2755 movemail
2659
2660 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2661 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2662 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2663 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2664 make install.
2665
2666 chgrp mail movemail
2667 chmod 2755 movemail
2668
2669 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2670 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2671 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2672 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2673 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2674 directory copy is ineffective.
2675
2676 * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2677
2678 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2679 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2680 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2681 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2682 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2683 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2684 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2685 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2686
2687 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2688
2689 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2690 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2691 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2692
2693 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2694 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2695 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2696 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2697 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2698 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2699
2700 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2701 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2702 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2703 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2704 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2705 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2706 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2707 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2708 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2709
2710 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2711 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2712 codes. You might as well try it.
2713
2714 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2715 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2716 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2717 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2718 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2719 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2720 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2721 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2722
2723 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2724 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2725 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2726 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2727 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2728 control handling.)
2729
2730 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2731 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2732 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2733 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2734 other control characters are already used by emacs.
2735
2736 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2737 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2738 order to continue.
2739
2740 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2741 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2742 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2743 automatically. Here is an example:
2744
2745 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2746
2747 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2748 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2749 manually.
2750
2751 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2752 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2753 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2754 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2755 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2756 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2757 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2758 of inferior systems.
2759
2760 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2761
2762 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2763 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2764 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2765 that wants to use flow control.
2766
2767 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2768 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2769 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2770
2771 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2772 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2773 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2774
2775 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2776
2777 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2778 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2779 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2780 control on the local system.
2781
2782 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2783 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2784 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2785 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
2786
2787 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2788 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2789 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2790
2791 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2792 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2793 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2794 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2795
2796 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2797
2798 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2799 info.
2800
2801 * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2802
2803 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2804 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2805 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2806
2807 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2808 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2809 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2810 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2811 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2812 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2813 There are several possibilities:
2814
2815 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2816
2817 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2818 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2819
2820 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2821 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2822 by termcap.
2823
2824 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2825 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2826 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2827 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2828 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2829 tested on many kinds of terminals.
2830
2831 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
2832
2833 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2834 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2835 for certain terminals.
2836
2837 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2838 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2839
2840 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2841 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2842
2843 * Output from Control-V is slow.
2844
2845 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2846 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2847 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2848 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2849 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2850 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2851
2852 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2853 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2854 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2855 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2856 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2857 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2858 time as the operations really take.
2859
2860 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2861 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2862 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2863 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2864 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2865 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2866 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2867 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2868 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2869 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2870
2871 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2872 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2873 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2874 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2875 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2876 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2877 `cm' string.
2878
2879 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2880 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2881 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2882
2883 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2884 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2885
2886 * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2887
2888 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2889
2890 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2891 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2892
2893 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2894
2895 * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
2896
2897 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
2898 after a day or two.
2899
2900 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
2901 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
2902 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
2903 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
2904 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
2905 to it.
2906
2907 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
2908 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
2909 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
2910 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
2911 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
2912 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
2913
2914 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
2915 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
2916 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
2917 You can probably access help-command via f1.
2918
2919 * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
2920 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
2921 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
2922 causes it.
2923
2924 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
2925 call in the RFS server.
2926
2927 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
2928 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
2929 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
2930 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
2931
2932 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
2933
2934 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
2935 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
2936 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
2937 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
2938 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
2939 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
2940 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
2941
2942 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
2943
2944 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2945 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
2946 retrieving revision 1.2
2947 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2948 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
2949 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
2950 ***************
2951 *** 163,169 ****
2952 /*
2953 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2954 */
2955 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
2956 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2957 else
2958 {
2959 --- 166,172 ----
2960 /*
2961 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2962 */
2963 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
2964 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2965 else
2966 {
2967
2968 * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
2969
2970 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
2971
2972 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
2973 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
2974
2975 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
2976 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
2977 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
2978 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
2979 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
2980 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
2981 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
2982
2983 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
2984 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
2985 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
2986 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
2987 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
2988 Lisp_Object *args;
2989 ...
2990 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
2991 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
2992 Lisp_Object *args;
2993 Lisp_Object tem;
2994 ...
2995 tem = args[i];
2996 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
2997 causes the problem to go away.
2998 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
2999 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3000
3001 * 68000 C compiler problems
3002
3003 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3004 These are some that have been observed.
3005
3006 ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3007 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3008 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3009
3010 ** "cannot reclaim" error.
3011
3012 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3013 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3014 simpler expressions.
3015
3016 ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3017
3018 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3019 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3020
3021 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3022
3023 lose (arg)
3024 struct foo arg;
3025 {
3026 test ((int *) arg.y);
3027 }
3028
3029 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3030 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3031 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3032
3033 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3034 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3035
3036 * C compilers lose on returning unions
3037
3038 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3039 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3040 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3041
3042 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3043 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3044