1 Known Problems with GNU Emacs
3 Copyright (C) 1987-1989, 1993-1999, 2001-2014 Free Software Foundation,
5 See the end of the file for license conditions.
8 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
9 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing C-c C-t
10 and browsing through the outline headers. (See C-h m for help on
11 Outline mode.) Information about systems that are no longer supported,
12 and old Emacs releases, has been removed. Consult older versions of
13 this file if you are interested in that information.
15 * Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23 onwards
17 It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
19 * Emacs startup failures
21 ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
23 A typical error message might be something like
25 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
27 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
28 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
31 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
33 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
34 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
35 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
37 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
38 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
39 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
41 ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
43 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
44 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
45 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
46 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
47 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
48 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
49 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
50 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
53 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
54 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
55 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
56 same directory where system header files are kept.
58 ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
60 If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
61 systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
62 ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
63 cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
64 libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
65 obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
67 The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
68 the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
69 symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
70 it constitutes a separate package.
72 ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
74 The typical error message might be like this:
76 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
78 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
79 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
80 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
81 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
82 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
83 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
84 it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
86 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
87 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
89 The solution is to uncompress all .el files that don't have a .elc file.
91 Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
92 lurking somewhere on your load-path -- see the next section.
94 ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
96 An example of such an error is:
98 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
100 This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
101 The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
102 present in load-path:
104 emacs -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
106 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
107 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
112 ** Emacs crashes when running in a terminal, if compiled with GCC 4.5.0
113 This version of GCC is buggy: see
115 http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6031
116 http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43904
118 You can work around this error in gcc-4.5 by omitting sibling call
119 optimization. To do this, configure Emacs with
121 CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls" ./configure
123 ** Emacs compiled with GCC 4.6.1 crashes on MS-Windows when C-g is pressed
125 This is known to happen when Emacs is compiled with MinGW GCC 4.6.1
126 with the -O2 option (which is the default in the Windows build). The
127 reason is a bug in MinGW GCC 4.6.1; to work around, either add the
128 `-fno-omit-frame-pointer' switch to GCC or compile without
129 optimizations (`--no-opt' switch to the configure.bat script).
131 ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
133 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
134 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
135 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
136 happens to exist on your X server).
138 ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
140 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
141 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
142 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
144 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
145 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
147 ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
148 a segmentation fault and core dump.
150 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
151 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
153 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
155 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
158 ** Emacs can crash when displaying PNG images with transparency.
159 This is due to a bug introduced in ImageMagick 6.8.2-3. The bug
160 should be fixed in ImageMagick 6.8.3-10. Please see Bug#13867.
162 ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
163 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
164 Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
165 if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
168 ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
170 This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
171 terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
172 If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
173 version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
174 and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
176 All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
177 problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
180 ** Emacs crashes when using some version of the Exceed X server.
182 Upgrading to a newer version of Exceed has been reported to prevent
183 these crashes. You should consider switching to a free X server, such
184 as Xming or Cygwin/X.
186 ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
188 It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
190 This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
191 the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
192 flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
193 necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
195 On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
196 configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
198 ** When Emacs is compiled with Gtk+, closing a display kills Emacs.
200 There is a long-standing bug in GTK that prevents it from recovering
201 from disconnects: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
203 Thus, for instance, when Emacs is run as a server on a text terminal,
204 and an X frame is created, and the X server for that frame crashes or
205 exits unexpectedly, Emacs must exit to prevent a GTK error that would
206 result in an endless loop.
208 If you need Emacs to be able to recover from closing displays, compile
209 it with the Lucid toolkit instead of GTK.
211 ** Emacs crashes when you try to view a file with complex characters.
212 For example, the etc/HELLO file (as shown by C-h h).
213 The message "symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/emacs: undefined symbol: OTF_open"
214 is shown in the terminal from which you launched Emacs.
215 This problem only happens when you use a graphical display (ie not
216 with -nw) and compiled Emacs with the "libotf" library for complex
219 This problem occurs because unfortunately there are two libraries
220 called "libotf". One is the library for handling OpenType fonts,
221 http://www.m17n.org/libotf/, which is the one that Emacs expects.
222 The other is a library for Open Trace Format, and is used by some
223 versions of the MPI message passing interface for parallel
226 For example, on RHEL6 GNU/Linux, the OpenMPI rpm provides a version
227 of "libotf.so" in /usr/lib/openmpi/lib. This directory is not
228 normally in the ld search path, but if you want to use OpenMPI,
229 you must issue the command "module load openmpi". This adds
230 /usr/lib/openmpi/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If you then start Emacs from
231 the same shell, you will encounter this crash.
232 Ref: <URL:https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=844776>
234 There is no good solution to this problem if you need to use both
235 OpenMPI and Emacs with libotf support. The best you can do is use a
236 wrapper shell script (or function) "emacs" that removes the offending
237 element from LD_LIBRARY_PATH before starting emacs proper.
238 Or you could recompile Emacs with an -Wl,-rpath option that
239 gives the location of the correct libotf.
241 * General runtime problems
245 *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
247 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
248 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
249 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
250 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
252 Emacs prints a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
253 than the corresponding .el file.
255 Alternatively, if you set the option `load-prefer-newer' non-nil,
256 Emacs will load whichever version of a file is the newest.
258 *** Watch out for the EMACSLOADPATH environment variable
260 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function "load" will search.
262 If you observe strange problems, check for this variable in your
265 *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
267 The error message might be something like this:
269 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
271 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
272 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
273 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
276 *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
278 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
279 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
280 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
282 *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
283 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
284 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
285 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
289 *** Unable to enter the M-| key on some German keyboards.
290 Some users have reported that M-| suffers from "keyboard ghosting".
291 This can't be fixed by Emacs, as the keypress never gets passed to it
292 at all (as can be verified using "xev"). You can work around this by
293 typing `ESC |' instead.
295 *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
297 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
298 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
299 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
300 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
301 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
302 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
304 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
305 them to two different keys.
307 *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
309 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
310 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
311 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
313 *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
314 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
316 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
317 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
318 another escape character in kermit. One user did
320 set escape-character 17
322 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
324 ** Mailers and other helper programs
326 *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
328 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
329 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
330 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
331 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
332 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
335 *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
337 RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
338 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
339 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
341 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
342 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
343 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
344 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
345 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h.
346 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
347 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
349 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
350 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
351 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
352 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
358 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
359 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
360 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
361 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
362 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
363 directory copy is ineffective.
365 *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
367 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
368 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
370 ** Problems with hostname resolution
372 *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
373 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
374 *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
375 *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
377 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
378 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
379 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
380 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
382 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
383 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
385 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
386 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
388 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
389 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library.
391 *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
393 For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
394 "localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
396 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
397 (i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
398 /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying this.
400 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
401 mail-host-address to the value you want.
405 *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
408 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
409 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
410 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
411 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
412 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
413 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
415 *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
416 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
417 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
420 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
421 call in the RFS server.
423 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
424 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
425 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
426 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
428 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
430 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
431 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
432 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
433 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
434 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
435 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
436 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
438 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
440 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
441 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
442 retrieving revision 1.2
443 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
444 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
445 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
449 * No return sent for close or fsync!
451 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
452 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
457 * No return sent for close or fsync!
459 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
460 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
464 ** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
466 PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
467 as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
468 of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
469 sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
470 HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
471 (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
472 (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
476 *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
478 When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
479 directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
480 from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
481 files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
482 not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
483 added to the top-level directory.
485 This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
486 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
488 ** Miscellaneous problems
490 *** Editing files with very long lines is slow.
492 For example, simply moving through a file that contains hundreds of
493 thousands of characters per line is slow, and consumes a lot of CPU.
494 This is a known limitation of Emacs with no solution at this time.
496 *** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
498 This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
499 The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
500 with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
502 *** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
504 This means that the file `etc/DOC' doesn't properly correspond
505 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
506 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
508 *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
511 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
512 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
513 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs emulates.
515 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
516 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
517 it only if it is undefined.
519 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
521 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
522 happen in a non-login shell.
524 *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
526 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
527 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
528 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
529 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
532 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
534 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
538 *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
540 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
541 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
542 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
545 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
547 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
549 *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
551 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
552 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
553 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
554 version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
555 systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
556 ftp client. On a Debian system, type
558 update-alternatives --config ftp
560 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
562 *** JPEG images aren't displayed.
564 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
565 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
566 correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
567 against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
569 *** Dired is very slow.
571 This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
572 time. Possible reasons for this include:
574 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
575 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
577 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
579 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
581 To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
582 `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
583 invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
584 (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
586 *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
588 This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
589 defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
590 runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
592 The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
594 *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
595 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
596 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
597 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
598 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
600 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
601 process invokes Emacs several times.
603 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
604 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
607 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
608 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
609 specified run-time search path in the executable.
611 On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
612 linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
613 backtraces like this:
616 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
617 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
618 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
619 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
620 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
621 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
622 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
623 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
624 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
626 (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
627 happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
628 forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
629 to work around the problem.
631 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
633 *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
634 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
636 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
637 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
638 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
640 *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
642 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
643 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
644 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
645 support for 8-bit characters.
647 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
648 this at your shell's prompt:
652 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
653 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
656 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
657 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
658 Then rebuild the speller.
660 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
661 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
663 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
664 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
665 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
666 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
667 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
669 If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
670 you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
671 can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
672 in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
674 * Runtime problems related to font handling
676 ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
678 *** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
679 For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
680 with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the
681 newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by
682 stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any
683 other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the
684 application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting
685 doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the
686 same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE,
687 it is sufficient to recompile Qt.
689 *** Some fonts have a missing glyph and no default character. This is
690 known to occur for character number 160 (no-break space) in some
691 fonts, such as Lucida but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte
692 and Latin-1 version of this character to display a space.
694 *** Some of the fonts called for in your fontset may not exist on your
697 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
698 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
699 many different fonts, collected into a fontset. You can remedy the
700 problem by installing additional fonts.
702 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
703 display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
704 of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
705 <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
706 fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
707 by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
709 ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
711 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
712 or the etl-unicode collection (see above).
714 ** Under X, an unexpected monospace font is used as the default font.
716 When compiled with XFT, Emacs tries to use a default font named
717 "monospace". This is a "virtual font", which the operating system
718 (Fontconfig) redirects to a suitable font such as DejaVu Sans Mono.
719 On some systems, there exists a font that is actually named Monospace,
720 which takes over the virtual font. This is considered an operating
723 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-10/msg00696.html
725 If you encounter this problem, set the default font to a specific font
726 in your .Xresources or initialization file. For instance, you can put
727 the following in your .Xresources:
729 Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono 12
731 ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it should.
733 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller than
734 the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that lines do not
737 ** Loading fonts is very slow.
739 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
740 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
741 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
744 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
745 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
747 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
748 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
749 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
751 ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
753 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
754 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
755 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
756 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
757 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
758 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
759 pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
760 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
761 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
762 to the end of a very large buffer.
764 Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
765 is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
766 to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
767 indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
769 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
770 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
771 fontification by setting the variable
772 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
773 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
775 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
776 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
778 ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
779 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
781 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
782 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
783 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
785 ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
787 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
788 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
789 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
790 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
792 A workaround for this is to add something like
794 emacs.waitForWM: false
796 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
797 frame's parameter list, like this:
799 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
801 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
803 ** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
805 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
806 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
807 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17.
808 To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties
809 to nil in your `.emacs'.
811 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
812 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
814 ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
816 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
817 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
818 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
819 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
820 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
822 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
823 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
825 ** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
827 If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
828 subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
829 are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
830 nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
831 different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
832 screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
833 the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
834 lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
835 normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
837 * Internationalization problems
839 ** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
841 Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
842 do anything about it.
844 ** International characters aren't displayed under X.
848 XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
849 minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
850 name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
851 according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
852 characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
853 able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
854 C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
855 font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
856 include in the fontset spec:
858 mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
859 mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
860 mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
862 ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
864 Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
865 ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
866 CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
868 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
870 The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
871 default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
872 charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
873 in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
875 If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
876 characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
877 (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
878 correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
879 If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
880 substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
883 ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
885 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
886 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
887 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
888 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
889 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
890 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
892 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
894 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
896 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the problem.
898 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
899 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
902 ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
904 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
905 slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
906 flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
907 support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
908 generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
910 ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
912 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
913 (standard-display-european t)
914 That should be changed to
915 (standard-display-european 1 t)
919 ** X keyboard problems
921 *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
923 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
924 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
925 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
926 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
928 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
930 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
932 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
933 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
934 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
936 *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
938 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
940 *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
942 Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
943 which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
944 from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
946 One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
947 which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
948 However, that requires root access.
950 Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
952 Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
954 The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
955 (Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
956 you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
957 by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
958 accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
960 *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
962 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
963 for character composition.
965 *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
967 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
968 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
969 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
970 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
973 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
974 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
976 *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
978 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
979 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
980 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
981 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
984 *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
986 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
987 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
988 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
990 *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
991 directly with an X server.
993 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
994 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
995 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
996 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
997 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
998 have made the key binding correctly.
1000 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1001 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1002 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by default.
1004 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1006 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1007 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1009 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1010 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1011 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1012 modifier bit not otherwise used.
1014 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1015 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1016 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1017 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1019 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1020 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1022 ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
1024 *** Metacity: Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab causes X to be unresponsive.
1026 This happens sometimes when using Metacity. Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab:bing
1027 makes the system unresponsive to the mouse or the keyboard. Killing Emacs
1028 or shifting out from X11 and back again usually cures it (i.e. Ctrl-Alt-F1
1029 and then Alt-F7). A bug for it is here:
1030 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/231034.
1031 Note that a permanent fix seems to be to disable "assistive technologies".
1033 *** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1035 This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1036 is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1037 input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1038 to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1039 example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1040 bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1042 *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
1044 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1045 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1046 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1047 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1050 *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1053 For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1054 empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1057 This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1058 definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1059 solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1060 option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1061 is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1063 Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1064 applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1065 (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1066 so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1067 Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1068 present or commented out:
1070 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1071 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1075 It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1076 Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1077 The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1079 *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1081 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1082 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1083 of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
1084 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1085 while, Emacs may print a message:
1087 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1089 A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1090 comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
1092 *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1094 This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1095 seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1096 To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1097 and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1099 *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1100 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1101 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1104 *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1105 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1106 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1107 For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1108 "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1109 used with neXtaw at run time.
1111 The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1112 want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1115 *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
1117 When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1118 graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1119 and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1120 file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
1122 The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1123 for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
1125 Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1126 but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1127 the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
1129 *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
1131 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1132 emulation for which it is set up.
1134 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1135 LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1136 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1137 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1138 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1139 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1142 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1143 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1144 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs developers.
1146 *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1148 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1150 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1152 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1153 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1154 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1155 the resource prevents the problem.
1157 ** General X problems
1159 *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1161 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1162 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1163 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1164 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1166 Here's how to do this:
1168 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1170 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1171 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1174 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1176 *** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
1178 The messages might say something like this:
1180 Unable to load color "grey95"
1182 (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
1184 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
1186 These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1187 many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1188 resources to load all the colors it needs.
1190 A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
1192 "undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1193 X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1194 X expects to find it.
1196 *** Improving performance with slow X connections.
1198 There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1199 be carried out at the same time:
1201 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1202 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1203 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1204 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1207 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1208 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1209 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1210 after the initial frame is displayed:
1212 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1216 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1219 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1223 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1224 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
1226 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1227 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1228 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1229 of the X protocol. lbxproxy achieves the performance gain by grouping
1230 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1231 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
1232 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1233 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1234 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1235 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1236 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
1238 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1239 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1240 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1241 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1243 *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1245 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1246 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1249 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1251 *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1253 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1254 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1256 *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1258 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1259 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1260 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1263 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1264 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1265 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1266 workaround can be found.
1268 *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1269 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1271 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1273 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1274 that isn't a color.)
1276 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1278 *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1280 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1281 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1282 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1285 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1286 your font path, like this:
1288 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1290 *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1292 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1294 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1296 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1297 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1298 want, rewrite the resource.
1300 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1301 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1302 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1304 *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1305 *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1307 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1308 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1311 *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1313 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1314 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1315 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1316 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1318 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1319 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1320 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1322 *** Prevent double pastes in X
1324 The problem: a region, such as a command, is pasted twice when you copy
1325 it with your mouse from GNU Emacs to an xterm or an RXVT shell in X.
1326 The solution: try the following in your X configuration file,
1327 /etc/X11/xorg.conf This should enable both PS/2 and USB mice for
1328 single copies. You do not need any other drivers or options.
1330 Section "InputDevice"
1331 Identifier "Generic Mouse"
1333 Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
1336 *** Emacs is slow to exit in X
1338 After you use e.g. C-x C-c to exit, it takes many seconds before the
1339 Emacs window disappears. If Emacs was started from a terminal, you
1342 Error saving to X clipboard manager.
1343 If the problem persists, set `x-select-enable-clipboard-manager' to nil.
1345 As the message suggests, this problem occurs when Emacs thinks you
1346 have a clipboard manager program running, but has trouble contacting it.
1347 If you don't want to use a clipboard manager, you can set the
1348 suggested variable. Or you can make Emacs not wait so long by
1349 reducing the value of `x-selection-timeout', either in .emacs or with
1352 Sometimes this problem is due to a bug in your clipboard manager.
1353 Updating to the latest version of the manager can help.
1354 For example, in the Xfce 4.8 desktop environment, the clipboard
1355 manager in versions of xfce4-settings-helper before 4.8.2 is buggy;
1356 https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7588 .
1358 *** Warning messages when running in Ubuntu
1360 When you start Emacs you may see something like this:
1362 (emacs:2286): LIBDBUSMENU-GTK-CRITICAL **: watch_submenu: assertion
1363 `GTK_IS_MENU_SHELL(menu)' failed
1365 This happens if the Emacs binary has been renamed. The cause is the Ubuntu
1366 appmenu concept. It tries to track Emacs menus and show them in the top
1367 panel, instead of in each Emacs window. This is not properly implemented,
1368 so it fails for Emacs. The order of menus is wrong, and things like copy/paste
1369 that depend on what state Emacs is in are usually wrong (i.e. paste disabled
1370 even if you should be able to paste, and similar).
1372 You can get back menus on each frame by starting emacs like this:
1373 % env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= emacs
1375 * Runtime problems on character terminals
1377 ** The meta key does not work on xterm.
1378 Typing M-x rings the terminal bell, and inserts a string like ";120~".
1379 For recent xterm versions (>= 216), Emacs uses xterm's modifyOtherKeys
1380 feature to generate strings for key combinations that are not
1381 otherwise usable. One circumstance in which this can cause problems
1382 is if you have specified the X resource
1384 xterm*VT100.Translations
1386 to contain translations that use the meta key. Then xterm will not
1387 use meta in modified function-keys, which confuses Emacs. To fix
1388 this, you can remove the X resource or put this in your init file:
1390 (xterm-remove-modify-other-keys)
1392 ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
1394 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1395 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1396 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1397 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1398 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1399 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1400 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1401 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
1403 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
1405 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1406 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1407 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
1409 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1410 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1411 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. (For example, on a VT220
1412 you may select "No XOFF" in the setup menu.) Sometimes there is an
1413 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1414 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1415 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
1417 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1418 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1419 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1420 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1421 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1422 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1423 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1424 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1425 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
1427 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1428 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1429 codes. You might as well try it.
1431 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1432 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1433 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1434 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1435 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1436 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1437 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1438 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
1440 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1441 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1442 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1443 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1444 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1447 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1448 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1449 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1450 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1451 other control characters are already used by emacs.
1453 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1454 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1457 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1458 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1459 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1460 automatically. Here is an example:
1462 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1464 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1465 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1468 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1469 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1470 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1471 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1472 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1473 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1474 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1475 of inferior systems.
1477 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
1479 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1480 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1481 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1482 that wants to use flow control.
1484 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1485 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1486 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
1488 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1489 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1490 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
1492 ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
1494 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1495 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1496 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
1498 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1499 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1500 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1501 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1502 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1503 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1504 There are several possibilities:
1506 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
1508 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1509 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
1511 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1512 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way by termcap.
1514 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1515 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1516 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1517 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1518 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1519 tested on many kinds of terminals.
1521 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
1523 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1524 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1525 for certain terminals.
1527 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1528 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
1530 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1531 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
1533 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
1535 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1536 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1537 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1538 control on the local system. Sometimes `rlogin -8' will avoid this problem.
1540 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1541 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1542 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1543 "stty start u stop u" will do this. On some systems, use
1544 "stty -ixon" instead.
1546 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1547 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1548 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
1550 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1551 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1552 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1553 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
1555 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1557 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more info.
1559 ** Output from Control-V is slow.
1561 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1562 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1563 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1564 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1565 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1566 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
1568 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1569 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1570 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1571 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1572 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1573 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1574 time as the operations really take.
1576 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1577 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1578 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1579 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1580 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1581 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1582 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1583 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1584 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1585 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
1587 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1588 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1589 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1590 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1591 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1592 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1595 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1596 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1597 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
1599 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1600 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
1602 ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
1604 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1607 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1608 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1609 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1610 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1611 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1614 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1615 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1616 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1617 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1618 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1619 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
1621 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1622 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1623 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1624 You can probably access help-command via f1.
1626 ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
1628 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1629 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1630 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1631 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1632 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1633 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1634 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1637 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1638 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1639 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1640 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1641 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1642 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1643 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1646 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1647 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1648 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1649 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
1651 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1652 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1653 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1654 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1657 Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1658 option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1659 modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1660 for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
1662 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1663 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1664 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1665 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1666 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1667 `global-font-lock-mode'.
1669 ** Unexpected characters inserted into the buffer when you start Emacs.
1670 See eg http://debbugs.gnu.org/11129
1672 This can happen when you start Emacs in -nw mode in an Xterm.
1673 For example, in the *scratch* buffer, you might see something like:
1677 This is more likely to happen if you are using Emacs over a slow
1678 connection, and begin typing before Emacs is ready to respond.
1680 This occurs when Emacs tries to query the terminal to see what
1681 capabilities it supports, and gets confused by the answer.
1682 To avoid it, set xterm-extra-capabilities to a value other than
1683 `check' (the default). See that variable's documentation (in
1684 term/xterm.el) for more details.
1686 * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
1690 *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1692 There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1693 read corrupted process output.
1695 *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1697 If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1698 due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1700 To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1701 executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1705 exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1708 *** GNU/Linux: Truncated svn annotate output with SSH.
1709 http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=7791
1711 The symptoms are: you are accessing a svn repository over SSH.
1712 You use vc-annotate on a large (several thousand line) file, and the
1713 result is truncated around the 1000 line mark. It works fine with
1714 other access methods (eg http), or from outside Emacs.
1716 This may be a similar libc/SSH issue to the one mentioned above for CVS.
1717 A similar workaround seems to be effective: create a script with the
1718 same contents as the one used above for CVS_RSH, and set the SVN_SSH
1719 environment variable to point to it.
1721 *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1722 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1724 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1725 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1728 *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1729 the Meta key stops working.
1731 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1732 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1733 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1734 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1735 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1736 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1737 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1739 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1740 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1741 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1742 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1743 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1746 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1748 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1749 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1751 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1753 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1754 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1755 keys can serve as Meta.
1757 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1758 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1760 *** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1762 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1763 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
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.
1770 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1772 **** Networked Case.
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):
1780 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
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).
1791 **** Non-Networked Case.
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.
1799 *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
1801 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1802 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1803 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1804 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1805 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1806 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1807 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1810 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1811 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1812 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1813 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1814 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1815 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
1817 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1818 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1819 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1820 produce a modified terminfo entry.
1822 Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1823 change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
1825 *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1827 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1828 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1829 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1830 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1832 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1836 *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1837 directories that have the +t bit.
1839 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1840 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1841 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1842 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1844 If you don't like those useless links, you can customize
1845 the option `create-lockfiles'.
1847 *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
1849 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1850 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1851 current keymap to a file with the command
1853 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
1855 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1856 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1857 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1860 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
1862 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
1864 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
1868 *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1870 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1872 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1873 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1874 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1875 but tty is giving it back 3.
1877 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1880 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1882 should be changed to:
1884 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1886 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1889 *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
1891 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1892 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1893 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1894 value is just ten seconds.
1896 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1898 *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1899 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1901 This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1902 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1903 configures the X server.
1905 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1906 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1907 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1912 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1914 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1915 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1918 *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1919 Emacs built with Motif.
1921 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1922 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1924 *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
1926 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1927 rights, containing this text:
1929 --------------------------------
1930 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1931 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1932 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1937 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1939 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1940 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1942 --------------------------------
1944 *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
1946 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1950 *** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
1952 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
1953 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
1955 *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
1957 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
1959 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
1960 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
1962 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
1964 *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
1965 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
1966 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
1967 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
1969 *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
1971 This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
1972 the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
1973 redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
1974 is to use the default compiler `cc'.
1976 *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1977 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1979 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1980 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1981 Definitions" to make them defined.
1985 We list bugs in current versions here. See also the section on legacy
1988 *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
1990 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1991 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
1993 *** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
1995 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
1996 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
1997 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
1998 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2000 *** Solaris 2.6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
2002 We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2003 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2004 makes the problem stop:
2006 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2007 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2008 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2009 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
2011 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2012 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
2014 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2015 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2016 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
2018 *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
2020 This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2021 Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
2023 *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2024 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
2026 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
2028 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
2030 *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2031 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
2033 You can fix this by editing the file:
2035 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
2037 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
2039 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2043 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2045 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
2047 *** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error
2048 "Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)".
2049 This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g
2050 and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by
2051 compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations.
2055 *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
2057 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
2059 *** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
2061 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2062 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2063 to allocate ptys reliably.
2065 * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
2067 ** PATH can contain unexpanded environment variables
2069 Old releases of TCC (version 9) and 4NT (up to version 8) do not correctly
2070 expand App Paths entries of type REG_EXPAND_SZ. When Emacs is run from TCC
2071 and such an entry exists for emacs.exe, exec-path will contain the
2072 unexpanded entry. This has been fixed in TCC 10. For more information,
2075 ** Setting w32-pass-rwindow-to-system and w32-pass-lwindow-to-system to nil
2076 does not prevent the Start menu from popping up when the left or right
2077 ``Windows'' key is pressed.
2079 This was reported to happen when XKeymacs is installed. At least with
2080 XKeymacs Version 3.47, deactivating XKeymacs when Emacs is active is
2081 not enough to avoid its messing with the keyboard input. Exiting
2082 XKeymacs completely is reported to solve the problem.
2084 ** Windows 95 and networking.
2086 To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2087 is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2089 Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2090 Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2091 "Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2093 ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
2095 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2096 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2099 ** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded.
2101 Loading rails-mode seems to interfere with UNC path handling. This has been
2102 reported as a bug against both Emacs and rails-mode, so look for an updated
2103 rails-mode that avoids this crash, or avoid using UNC paths if using
2106 ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.3
2108 M-x term does not work on MS-Windows. TTY emulation on Windows is
2109 undocumented, and programs such as stty which are used on posix platforms
2110 to control tty emulation do not exist for native windows terminals.
2112 Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2113 with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2114 Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2115 which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2116 use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
2118 Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2119 is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2120 displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2121 synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2122 waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2123 pop-up menu interaction.
2125 Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2126 for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
2128 When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2129 screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2130 "Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2131 characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some
2132 characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under
2133 ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box.
2134 Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and
2135 has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently,
2136 this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A
2137 workaround is to disable ClearType.
2139 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2140 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2141 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2142 after moving back into it.
2144 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2145 not as severely as in 21.1.
2147 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2148 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
2150 Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
2151 of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2152 in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2153 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2154 input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2155 appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2156 example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2158 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2160 (Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2161 the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2162 that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2163 should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2164 this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2167 To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2168 must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2169 META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2171 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2173 The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2174 of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2175 encoding appropriate to that environment.
2177 The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2178 month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2179 of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2182 The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
2183 non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
2184 daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
2186 Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
2187 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2188 well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2189 on `file-attributes'.
2191 Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2192 You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2194 ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
2196 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2197 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2198 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2199 more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2200 or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
2201 Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
2202 and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
2203 changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
2204 in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
2206 ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
2208 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2209 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2210 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2211 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2212 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
2214 ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2216 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2217 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2218 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2219 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2220 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2223 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2224 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2225 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2226 directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2227 variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2228 client's executable. For example:
2230 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
2232 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2233 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
2235 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
2237 ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
2239 This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2240 likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
2242 Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2243 print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2244 printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2245 built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2248 (setq printer-name "") ; notepad takes the default
2249 (setq lpr-command "notepad") ; notepad
2250 (setq lpr-switches nil) ; not needed
2251 (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ; run notepad as batch printer
2253 ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2255 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2256 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2257 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2258 work when an antivirus package is installed.
2260 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2261 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2262 or disable it entirely.
2264 ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
2266 This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2267 programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2268 mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2269 different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2270 middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2271 "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2272 generic mouse driver might help.
2274 ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
2276 This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2277 generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2278 movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2279 scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
2281 ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2282 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2283 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2286 ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2287 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
2289 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
2291 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2292 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2293 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2294 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2295 AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2296 to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
2298 ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
2300 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2301 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2302 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2303 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
2305 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2306 as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2307 problem lies in the X-server settings.
2309 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2310 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2311 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2314 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2315 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2316 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it here.
2318 * Build-time problems
2322 *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
2324 There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2325 by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2326 default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
2328 If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2329 `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2330 shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2331 the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2332 Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2333 explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
2335 *** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2337 This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2338 configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2339 CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2340 CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2341 see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2343 The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2344 for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2349 *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
2351 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2352 (Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2353 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2354 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2355 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2356 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2357 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2358 Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
2360 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2361 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2362 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2363 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
2365 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2366 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2367 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2368 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2369 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2370 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2371 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2372 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2375 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2376 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2377 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2378 to work around the problem.
2380 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2381 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2382 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2383 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
2385 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
2387 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
2389 *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2391 First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2392 files are installed. Then use:
2394 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2395 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2397 (using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2399 *** Building Emacs for Cygwin can fail with GCC 3
2401 As of Emacs 22.1, there have been stability problems with Cygwin
2402 builds of Emacs using GCC 3. Cygwin users are advised to use GCC 4.
2404 *** Building Emacs 23.3 and later will fail under Cygwin 1.5.19
2406 This is a consequence of a change to src/dired.c on 2010-07-27. The
2407 issue is that Cygwin 1.5.19 did not have d_ino in 'struct dirent'.
2410 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-07/msg01266.html
2412 *** Building the native MS-Windows port fails due to unresolved externals
2414 The linker error messages look like this:
2416 oo-spd/i386/ctags.o:ctags.c:(.text+0x156e): undefined reference to `_imp__re_set_syntax'
2417 collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
2419 This happens because GCC finds an incompatible header regex.h
2420 somewhere on the include path, before the version of regex.h supplied
2421 with Emacs. One such incompatible version of regex.h is part of the
2422 GnuWin32 Regex package.
2424 The solution is to remove the incompatible regex.h from the include
2425 path, when compiling Emacs. Alternatively, re-run the configure.bat
2426 script with the "-isystem C:/GnuWin32/include" switch (adapt for your
2427 system's place where you keep the GnuWin32 include files) -- this will
2428 cause the compiler to search headers in the directories specified by
2429 the Emacs Makefile _before_ it looks in the GnuWin32 include
2432 *** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
2434 Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2435 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2436 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2437 __MSVCRT__, like so:
2439 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
2441 *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
2443 Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2444 to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2445 fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
2447 *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
2449 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2450 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2451 patch to assert.h should solve this:
2453 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2454 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2458 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2460 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2462 #else /* debugging enabled */
2466 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2468 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2470 #else /* debugging enabled */
2473 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
2475 Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2476 with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
2477 some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
2478 dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2479 conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2480 is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
2482 We recommend the use of the MinGW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2483 not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2484 software like Emacs.
2486 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio fails compiling emacs.rc
2488 If the build fails with the following message then the problem
2489 described here most likely applies:
2491 ../nt/emacs.rc(1) : error RC2176 : old DIB in icons\emacs.ico; pass it
2494 The Emacs icon contains a high resolution PNG icon for Vista, which is
2495 not recognized by older versions of the resource compiler. There are
2496 several workarounds for this problem:
2497 1. Use Free MinGW tools to compile, which do not have this problem.
2498 2. Install the latest Windows SDK.
2499 3. Replace emacs.ico with an older or edited icon.
2501 *** Building the MS-Windows port complains about unknown escape sequences.
2503 Errors and warnings can look like this:
2505 w32.c:1959:27: error: \x used with no following hex digits
2506 w32.c:1959:27: warning: unknown escape sequence '\i'
2508 This happens when paths using backslashes are passed to the compiler or
2509 linker (via -I and possibly other compiler flags); when these paths are
2510 included in source code, the backslashes are interpreted as escape sequences.
2511 See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-07/msg00995.html
2513 The fix is to use forward slashes in all paths passed to the compiler.
2517 *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2518 undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
2520 This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2521 with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2522 GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2523 from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2524 compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2527 A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
2531 Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2532 with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
2534 *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2536 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2538 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2540 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2542 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2543 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2545 *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2547 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2549 *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
2551 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2552 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2553 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2554 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2555 does not work with this version of ncurses.
2557 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
2561 Bootstrapping (compiling the .el files) is normally only necessary
2562 with development builds, since the .elc files are pre-compiled in releases.
2564 *** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1
2566 Compiling the lisp files fails at random places, complaining:
2567 "No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'".
2568 The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled
2569 from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked. See Bug#327,821.
2573 *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
2575 With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
2576 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2577 creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2578 to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2579 instructions can be useful.
2580 The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2581 newer). Read the next item.
2583 Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2584 x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2585 workaround is known.
2587 You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
2589 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2591 It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2592 read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2593 associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2595 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2597 When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2598 execution of this command:
2600 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2602 To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2603 Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2604 command when running temacs like this:
2606 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2609 *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2611 In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2612 `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2613 item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2614 address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2615 you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2618 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2622 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
2624 *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
2626 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2627 Makefile in the src subdirectory.
2629 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2630 space available on the machine.
2632 On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2633 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2634 for large blocks (many pages).
2636 *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2637 *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2638 *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2639 *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
2641 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2642 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2643 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2645 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2646 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2647 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2648 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2649 when unpacking the shell archive.
2651 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2652 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2653 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2655 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2656 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2658 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2659 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2660 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2661 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2662 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2663 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2664 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2665 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2666 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2667 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2668 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2670 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2672 *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
2674 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el files
2675 during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more space than was allocated.
2677 This could be caused by
2678 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2679 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2680 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2681 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2682 if you have received Emacs from some other site and it contains a
2683 site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider deleting that file.
2684 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2685 (not from the directory you expected).
2686 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2687 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2688 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2689 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates the space required.
2691 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2692 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2694 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2695 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real problem.
2697 *** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2699 The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
2700 --load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
2701 to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
2702 build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2703 GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2704 occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
2706 *** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2708 This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2709 It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2713 *** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2715 The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2716 build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2717 outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2718 out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2719 make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2720 macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2721 used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2722 step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2723 installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
2724 10 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2725 Software Companion CDROM.
2727 The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2728 out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2729 without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2730 from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2734 *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
2736 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2737 via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2738 Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2739 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
2741 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
2743 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2744 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
2746 *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2748 On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2749 as a macro. If the definition (in both unex*.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2750 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2751 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2753 * Runtime problems on legacy systems
2755 This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2756 If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2757 it is unlikely you will see any of these.
2759 *** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
2761 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
2764 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
2766 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
2767 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
2768 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
2770 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
2772 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
2773 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
2775 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
2776 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
2780 **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
2782 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
2783 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
2786 **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
2788 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
2789 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
2790 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
2792 **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
2794 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
2795 version of Solaris that you are using.
2797 **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
2799 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2800 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2801 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2802 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2803 described in the Solaris FAQ
2804 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2805 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2807 **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
2808 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
2809 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
2810 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
2811 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
2812 and the default CFLAGS.
2814 **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
2816 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
2817 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
2818 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
2819 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
2820 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
2821 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
2822 are currently recommended for your host.
2824 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
2825 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
2826 105284-18 might fix it again.
2828 **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
2830 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
2831 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
2832 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
2833 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
2835 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
2836 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
2837 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
2838 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
2841 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
2842 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11 libraries.
2844 *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
2846 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2847 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2848 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2849 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2850 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2851 install them and rebuild Emacs.
2853 *** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
2855 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
2856 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
2857 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
2858 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
2859 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
2860 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
2862 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
2863 But you have to be root to do it.
2865 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
2867 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
2868 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
2869 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
2870 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
2871 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
2873 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
2874 These changes take effect when you reboot.
2876 ** MS-Windows 95, 98, ME, and NT
2878 *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
2880 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
2881 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
2883 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
2884 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
2887 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
2888 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
2889 communicate with the subprocess.
2891 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
2892 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
2893 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
2896 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
2900 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
2901 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
2908 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2916 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2921 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
2922 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
2929 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2937 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2941 *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
2943 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
2944 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
2946 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
2948 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
2949 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
2950 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the Emacs on MS
2951 Windows FAQ (info manual "efaq-w32").
2953 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
2955 When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
2956 Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
2957 particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
2958 program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system PATH.
2962 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT or later, "config msdos" fails.
2964 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
2965 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
2966 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
2967 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
2968 the front of your PATH environment variable.
2970 *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Windows 2000 and later, it cannot
2971 find your HOME directory.
2973 This was reported to happen when you click on "Save for future
2974 sessions" button in a Customize buffer. You might see an error
2975 message like this one:
2977 basic-save-buffer-2: c:/FOO/BAR/~dosuser/: no such directory
2979 (The telltale sign is the "~USER" part at the end of the directory
2980 Emacs complains about, where USER is your username or the literal
2981 string "dosuser", which is the default username set up by the DJGPP
2982 startup file DJGPP.ENV.)
2984 This happens when the functions `user-login-name' and
2985 `user-real-login-name' return different strings for your username as
2986 Emacs sees it. To correct this, make sure both USER and USERNAME
2987 environment variables are set to the same value. Windows 2000 and
2988 later sets USERNAME, so if you want to keep that, make sure USER is
2989 set to the same value. If you don't want to set USER globally, you
2990 can do it in the [emacs] section of your DJGPP.ENV file.
2992 *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Vista, it runs out of memory.
2994 If Emacs running on Vista displays "!MEM FULL!" in the mode line, you
2995 are hitting the memory allocation bugs in the Vista DPMI server. See
2996 msdos/INSTALL for how to work around these bugs (search for "Vista").
2998 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3001 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3002 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3003 compilation are not the same. See msdos/INSTALL for the explanation
3004 of how to avoid this problem.
3006 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
3008 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
3010 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3011 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3012 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3013 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3014 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3015 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3016 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3017 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3018 your system works as before.
3020 *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
3022 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3023 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't
3024 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3025 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3026 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
3028 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3029 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3030 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3031 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
3033 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3034 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3035 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3036 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3037 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
3039 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3040 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3041 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
3043 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3044 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3045 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
3047 *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOS if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
3049 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
3051 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3052 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3053 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
3055 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3056 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3057 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3058 incorrect library functions.
3060 *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3061 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
3063 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3064 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3065 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3066 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
3068 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3069 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and Lisp.
3071 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3072 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3073 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3074 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3075 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3076 compiled with DJGPP v2). The file msdos/INSTALL explains this issue
3079 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3080 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3081 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3082 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3083 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3084 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3087 ** Archaic window managers and toolkits
3089 *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
3091 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3092 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3093 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3094 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3095 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
3097 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
3099 *** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
3101 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3102 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
3104 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
3106 ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
3108 *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
3110 This shell command should fix it:
3112 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
3114 *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3117 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
3118 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
3120 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
3122 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
3123 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
3124 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
3125 (at your option) any later version.
3127 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3128 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3129 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3130 GNU General Public License for more details.
3132 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3133 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
3138 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"