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A work-around for blinking block cursor on a GNU/Linux console.
[gnu-emacs] / etc / PROBLEMS
1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
4 * Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
5
6 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7 of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
8 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
9 dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
10 around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
11 incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
12 ". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
13 directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
14 variables).
15
16 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
17 `-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
18 when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
19 unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
20 run the script like this:
21
22 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
23
24 (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
25 the script).
26
27 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
28 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
29
30 * Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
31
32 Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
33 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
34 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
35 __MSVCRT__, like so:
36
37 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
38
39 * Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
40
41 The error message might be something like this:
42
43 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
44 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
45 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
46 '0xffffffff'
47 Stop.
48
49 This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
50 which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
51 `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
52 endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
53 or EOL conversions.
54
55 The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
56 change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
57 in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
58 which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
59 mangling them.
60
61 * Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
62
63 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
64 C backtrace printed by GDB:
65
66 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
67 (gdb) where
68 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
69 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
70 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
71 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
72
73 This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
74 of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
75 but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
76 other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
77 distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
78 GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
79 following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
80 distribution:
81
82 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux ecept for Yellowdog,
83 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
84 know what's really going on here. */
85 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
86 0x10000000. */
87 #if defined __linux__
88 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
89 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
90 #endif
91 #endif
92 #endif /* 0 */
93
94 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
95 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
96 should now succeed.
97
98 * JPEG images aren't displayed.
99
100 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
101 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
102
103 * Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
104
105 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
106 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
107 patch to assert.h should solve this:
108
109 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
110 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
111 ***************
112 *** 41,47 ****
113 /*
114 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
115 */
116 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
117
118 #else /* debugging enabled */
119
120 --- 41,47 ----
121 /*
122 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
123 */
124 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
125
126 #else /* debugging enabled */
127
128
129
130 * Improving performance with slow X connections
131
132 If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
133 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by
134 configuring Emacs with option `--without-xim'. Configuring Emacs
135 without XIM does not affect the use of Emacs' own input methods, which
136 are part of the Leim package.
137
138 If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
139 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
140
141 * Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
142
143 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
144 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
145 current keymap to a file with the command
146
147 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
148
149 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
150 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
151 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
152 to look like this
153
154 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
155
156 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
157
158 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
159
160 * Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
161
162 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
163 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
164 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
165 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
166 been filed.
167
168 * Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
169
170 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
171 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
172 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
173 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
174
175 A workaround for this is to add something like
176
177 emacs.waitForWM: false
178
179 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
180 frame's parameter list, like this:
181
182 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
183
184 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
185
186 * Underlines appear at the wrong position.
187
188 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
189 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
190 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
191 problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
192 `.emacs'.
193
194 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
195 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
196 property.
197
198 * When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
199 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
200 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
201 problem disappears.
202
203 * There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
204 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
205 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
206 If you try it and it does not work, try rebuilding Emacs with the
207 toolkit version you actually want to use.
208
209 * Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
210
211 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
212 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
213 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
214
215 * Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
216
217 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
218 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
219 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
220 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
221 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
222 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
223 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
224 "colors".
225
226 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
227 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
228 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
229 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
230 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
231 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
232 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
233 capability).
234
235 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
236 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
237 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
238 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
239
240 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
241 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
242 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
243 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
244 emulator.
245
246 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
247 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
248 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
249 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
250 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
251 `global-font-lock-mode'.
252
253 * Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
254
255 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
256 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
257 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
258 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
259 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
260 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
261 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
262 always blinks.
263
264 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
265 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
266 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
267 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
268 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
269 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
270
271 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
272 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
273 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
274 produce a modified terminfo entry.
275
276 * Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
277
278 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
279 emulation for which it is set up.
280
281 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
282 Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
283 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
284 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
285 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
286 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
287 menu placement.
288
289 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
290 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
291 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
292 developers.
293
294 * Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
295
296 Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
297 and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
298
299 Help text that is displayed in a tooltip on other window systems, on
300 Windows is printed in the echo area, since tooltips are not yet
301 available. Help text for pop-up menu items is not displayed at all.
302
303 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
304 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
305 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
306 after moving back into it.
307
308 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
309 not as severely as in 21.1.
310
311 Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
312 characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
313
314 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
315 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
316
317 Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
318 These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
319 the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
320 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
321 work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
322 you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
323 the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
324 ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
325 appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
326 yet.)
327
328 Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
329 applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
330 is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
331 but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
332 means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
333 Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
334 Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
335 set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
336
337 * The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
338
339 This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
340 libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
341 install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
342 where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
343 probably isn't limited to that system.
344
345 You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
346 and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
347 which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
348 which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
349 generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
350
351 (If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
352 libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
353
354 * Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
355
356 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
357 (RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
358 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
359 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
360 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
361 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
362 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
363 Emacs excutable to fail with the above message.
364
365 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
366 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
367 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
368 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
369
370 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
371 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
372 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
373 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
374 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
375 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
376 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
377 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
378 `/etc/auto.home'.
379
380 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
381 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
382 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
383 to work around the problem.
384
385 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
386 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
387 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
388 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
389
390 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
391
392 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
393
394 * Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
395
396 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
397 via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
398 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
399
400 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
401
402 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
403 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
404
405 * Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
406
407 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
408 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
409 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
410 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
411 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
412 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
413
414 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
415
416 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
417
418 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
419 problem.
420
421 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
422 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
423 `xset fp rehash'.
424
425 * Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
426 src/s/hpux10.h.
427
428 * Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
429 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
430
431 * Font Lock displays portions of the bufefr in incorrect faces.
432
433 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
434 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
435 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
436 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
437 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
438 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
439 patological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
440 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
441 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
442 to the end of a very large buffer.
443
444 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
445 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
446 fontification by setting the variable
447 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
448 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
449
450 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
451 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
452
453 * Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
454
455 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
456 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
457 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
458 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
459 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
460
461 * Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
462
463 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
464 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
465 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
466 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
467 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
468 confuses ange-ftp.
469
470 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
471 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
472 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' directory. To
473 force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the variable
474 `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the client's
475 executable. For example:
476
477 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
478
479 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
480 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
481
482 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
483
484
485 * The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
486 with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
487 fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
488 work.
489
490 Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
491 If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
492 CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
493
494 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
495 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
496 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
497 @@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
498 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
499 (error nil))))
500 (t
501 - (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
502 + ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
503 + (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
504 (condition-case ()
505 (progn
506 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
507 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
508 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
509 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
510 @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
511 +;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
512 +;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
513 +
514 +(require 'w3-e19)
515 +(provide 'w3-e21)
516
517 * On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
518 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
519 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
520 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
521
522 * The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
523 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
524 longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.2 fix that.
525
526 --- psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:23:31 1.1
527 +++ psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:24:22
528 @@ -264,4 +264,4 @@
529 ; inhibit-read-only
530 - (before-change-function nil)
531 - (after-change-function nil))
532 + (before-change-functions nil)
533 + (after-change-functions nil))
534 (setq selective-display t)
535 @@ -1544,3 +1544,3 @@
536 (buffer-read-only nil)
537 - (before-change-function nil)
538 + (before-change-functions nil)
539 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
540 @@ -1596,3 +1596,3 @@
541 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
542 - (let (before-change-function
543 + (let (before-change-functions
544 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
545 @@ -1613,3 +1613,3 @@
546 (re-found nil)
547 - before-change-function)
548 + before-change-functions)
549 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
550 @@ -1646,3 +1646,3 @@
551 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
552 - (let ((before-change-function nil))
553 + (let ((before-change-functions nil))
554 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
555 Index: psgml-other.el
556 --- psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:23:42 1.1
557 +++ psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:30:05
558 @@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
559 (require 'easymenu)
560 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
561
562 @@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
563 (let ((submenu
564 - (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
565 - sgml-max-menu-size))))
566 +;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
567 +;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
568 + (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
569 + (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
570 + sgml-max-menu-size))
571 + new) nil)
572 + new)))
573 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
574 @@ -113,9 +119,10 @@
575 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
576 - (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
577 - (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
578 (after-change-functions nil)
579 - (before-change-functions nil))
580 + (before-change-functions nil)
581 + (modified (buffer-modified-p))
582 + (buffer-undo-list t)
583 + deactivate-mark)
584 (put-text-property start end 'face face)
585 - (when (< start end)
586 - (put-text-property (1- end) end 'rear-nonsticky '(face)))))
587 + (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
588 + (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
589 (t
590 Index: psgml-parse.el
591 --- psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:23:57 1.1
592 +++ psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:29:56
593 @@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
594
595 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
596 +
597 \f
598 @@ -2493,8 +2495,8 @@
599 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
600 - (when after-change-function ;***
601 - (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
602 + (when after-change-functions ;***
603 + (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
604 (current-buffer)
605 - after-change-function)
606 - (setq before-change-function nil
607 - after-change-function nil))
608 + after-change-functions)
609 + (setq before-change-functions nil
610 + after-change-functions nil))
611 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
612 @@ -2878,6 +2880,5 @@
613 "Set initial state of parsing"
614 - (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
615 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
616 - (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
617 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
618 + (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
619 + (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
620 + '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
621 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
622 @@ -3925,7 +3926,7 @@
623 (sgml-need-dtd)
624 - (unless before-change-function
625 - (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
626 + (unless before-change-functions
627 + (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
628 (current-buffer))
629 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
630 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change))
631 + (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
632 + (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change)))
633 (sgml-with-parser-syntax-ro
634
635 * Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
636
637 As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
638 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
639 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
640 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
641 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
642 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
643 text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
644 into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
645 buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
646
647 To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
648
649 * Problems when using Emacs with UTF-8 locales
650
651 Some systems, including recent versions of GNU/Linux, have terminals
652 or X11 subsystems that can be configured to provide Unicode/UTF-8
653 input and display. Normally, such a system sets environment variables
654 such as LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL to a string which ends with a
655 `.UTF-8'. For example, a system like this in a French locale might
656 use `fr_FR.UTF-8' as the value of LANG.
657
658 Since Unicode support in Emacs, as of v21.1, is not yet complete (see
659 the previous entry in this file), UTF-8 support is not enabled by
660 default, even in UTF-8 locales. Thus, some Emacs features, such as
661 non-ASCII keyboard input, might appear to be broken in these locales.
662 To solve these problems, you need to turn on some options in your
663 `.emacs' file. Specifically, the following customizations should make
664 Emacs work correctly with UTF-8 input and text:
665
666 (setq locale-coding-system 'utf-8)
667 (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
668 (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
669 (set-selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
670 (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
671
672 * The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
673
674 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
675 slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
676 e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
677 Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
678 correctly by Emacs 21.
679
680 * Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
681
682 The error message might be something like this:
683
684 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
685
686 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
687 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
688 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
689 corrects that.
690
691 * On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
692 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
693 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
694 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
695 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
696
697 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
698 process invokes Emacs several times.
699
700 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
701 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
702 can be found.
703
704 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
705 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
706 specified run-time search path in the executable.
707
708 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
709
710 * On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
711 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
712 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
713 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
714 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
715 and the default CFLAGS.
716
717 * Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
718
719 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
720 following message:
721
722 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
723
724 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
725 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
726 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
727
728 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
729 {
730 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
731 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
732
733 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
734 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
735
736 * Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
737
738 A typical error message might be something like
739
740 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
741
742 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
743 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
744 are:
745
746 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
747
748 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
749 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
750 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
751
752 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
753 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
754 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
755
756 * Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
757
758 The typical error message might be like this:
759
760 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
761
762 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
763 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
764 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
765 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
766 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
767 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
768 its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
769
770 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
771 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
772
773 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
774 file.
775
776 * Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
777
778 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
779 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
780 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.3
781 with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other systems as well. To
782 avoid this problem, switch to using the standard ftp client. On a
783 Debian system, type
784
785 update-alternatives --config ftpd
786
787 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
788
789 * Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
790
791 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
792 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
793 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
794 work when an antivirus package is installed.
795
796 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
797 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
798 or disable it entirely.
799
800 * On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
801
802 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
803 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
804 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
805 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
806
807 * Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
808 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
809 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
810 seen.
811
812 * After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
813
814 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
815 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
816 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
817 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
818 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
819 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
820 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
821
822 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
823 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
824 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
825 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
826 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
827 modifier:
828
829 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
830
831 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
832 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
833
834 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
835
836 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
837 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
838 keys can serve as Meta.
839
840 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
841 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
842
843 * On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
844 remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
845 keyboard(5).
846
847 Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
848 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
849 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
850
851 * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
852
853 Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
854 It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
855 system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
856 the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
857
858 * Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
859
860 This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
861 and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
862 manager.
863
864 This bug was reported to Sun as
865
866 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
867 Bug Reports: 4463537
868
869 Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
870 reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
871 library xiiimp.so.
872
873 Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
874 the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
875 can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
876
877 * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
878
879 This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
880 assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
881 To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
882 or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
883 Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
884
885 * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
886
887 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
888
889 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
890 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
891 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
892 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
893 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
894 /******************************************************************
895
896 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
897 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
898 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
899 XLCd lcd;
900 {
901 - char* begin;
902 - char* end;
903 + char* begin = NULL;
904 + char* end = NULL;
905 char* ret;
906 int i = 0;
907 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
908 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
909 }
910 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
911 if (ret != NULL) {
912 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
913 + if (begin != NULL) {
914 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
915 + } else {
916 + ret[0] = '\0';
917 + }
918 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
919 }
920 return ret;
921
922
923 * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
924
925 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
926
927 * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
928
929 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
930 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
931
932 * The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
933
934 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
935 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
936 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
937 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
938 purposes.
939
940 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
941 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
942
943 * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
944 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
945
946 You can fix this by editing the file:
947
948 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
949
950 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
951
952 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
953
954 that should read:
955
956 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
957
958 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
959
960 * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
961 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
962
963 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
964 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
965
966 * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
967
968 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
969 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
970 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
971
972 * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
973
974 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
975 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
976 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
977 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
978 change this.
979
980 * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
981
982 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
983 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
984 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
985 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
986 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
987
988 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
989 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
990
991 * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
992
993 This problem manifests itself as an error message
994
995 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
996
997 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
998 were built for an older system version,
999
1000 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
1001
1002 made the problem go away.
1003
1004 * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
1005
1006 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
1007 as of 8 Dec 1998.
1008
1009 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1010
1011 * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1012 the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1013 next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1014
1015 * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1016
1017 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1018 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1019 likely to cause it.
1020
1021 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1022
1023 * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1024
1025 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1026
1027 * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1028
1029 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1030
1031 * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1032 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1033 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1034 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1035
1036 * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1037 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1038 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1039 earlier versions.
1040
1041 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1042 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1043 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1044 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1045 (cond
1046 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1047 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1048 + (insert-file-contents entity)
1049 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1050 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1051 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1052
1053 * Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1054
1055 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1056 these problems.
1057
1058 * Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
1059 about a read-only tex output buffer.
1060
1061 This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1062 versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1063 package.
1064
1065 diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1066 *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1067 --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1068 ***************
1069 *** 545,551 ****
1070 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1071 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1072 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1073 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1074 (set-buffer buffer)
1075 (if dir (cd dir))
1076 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1077 - --- 545,552 ----
1078 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1079 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1080 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1081 ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1082 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1083 (set-buffer buffer)
1084 (if dir (cd dir))
1085 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1086
1087 * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1088 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1089
1090 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1091
1092 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1093 003082 August 11, 1998.
1094
1095 * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1096
1097 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1098 (standard-display-european t)
1099 That should be changed to
1100 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1101
1102 * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1103
1104 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1105 supplies the `install-info' command.
1106
1107 * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1108
1109 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1110 rights, containing this text:
1111
1112 --------------------------------
1113 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1114 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1115 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1116 EOF
1117
1118 xmodmap - << EOF
1119 clear mod1
1120 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1121 add mod1 = Meta_L
1122 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1123 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1124 EOF
1125 --------------------------------
1126
1127 * Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1128
1129 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1130 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1131 of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1132 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1133 while, Emacs will print a message:
1134
1135 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1136
1137 A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
1138
1139 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1140 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1141 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1142
1143 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1144 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1145 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1146
1147 * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1148
1149 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1150 for character composition.
1151
1152 * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1153
1154 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1155 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1156 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
1157
1158 127.0.0.1 localhost
1159 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1160
1161 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1162
1163 * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1164
1165 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1166 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1167 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1168 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1169 in Emacs.
1170
1171 * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1172
1173 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1174 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1175 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1176 support for 8-bit characters.
1177
1178 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1179 this at your shell's prompt:
1180
1181 ispell -vv
1182
1183 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1184 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1185 does not.
1186
1187 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1188 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1189 Then rebuild the speller.
1190
1191 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1192 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1193
1194 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1195 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1196 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1197 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1198 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
1199
1200 * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1201 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1202
1203 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1204 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1205 known to work.
1206
1207 * On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1208 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1209
1210 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1211
1212 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1213 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1214 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1215 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1216 AltGr has been pressed.
1217
1218 * Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1219
1220 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1221 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1222 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1223 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1224
1225 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1226 well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1227
1228 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1229 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1230 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1231 selection".
1232
1233 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1234 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1235 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1236 here.
1237
1238 * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1239
1240 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1241 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1242 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1243 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1244 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1245 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1246 are currently recommended for your host.
1247
1248 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1249 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1250 105284-18 might fix it again.
1251
1252 * On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1253
1254 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1255 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1256 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1257 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
1258
1259 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1260 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1261 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1262 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1263 should do.
1264
1265 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1266 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1267 libraries.
1268
1269 * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1270
1271 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1272 either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1273 calls for specifying this.
1274
1275 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1276 mail-host-address to the value you want.
1277
1278 * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1279
1280 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1281 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1282 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1283 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1284 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1285 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1286
1287 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1288 But you have to be root to do it.
1289
1290 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1291
1292 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1293 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1294 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1295 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1296 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1297
1298 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1299 These changes take effect when you reboot.
1300
1301 * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1302
1303 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1304 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1305 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1306 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1307
1308 Here's how to do this:
1309
1310 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1311
1312 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1313 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1314 to normal, do
1315
1316 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1317
1318 * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1319
1320 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1321 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1322 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1323
1324 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1325 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1326 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1327
1328 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1329 display all the characters Emacs supports.
1330
1331 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1332 missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1333 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1334 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1335 of this character to display a space.
1336
1337 * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1338
1339 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1340
1341 * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1342
1343 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1344 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1345 lines do not overlap.
1346
1347 * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1348 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1349
1350 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1351 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1352 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1353
1354 * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1355 directories that have the +t bit.
1356
1357 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1358 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1359 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1360 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1361
1362 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1363 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1364
1365 * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1366 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1367
1368 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1369
1370 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1371
1372 * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1373 appear on disk.
1374
1375 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1376 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1377 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1378 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1379 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1380 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1381
1382 * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1383
1384 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1385 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1386 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1387 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1388 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1389 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1390
1391 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1392 them to two different keys.
1393
1394 * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1395
1396 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1397 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1398
1399 * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1400
1401 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1402 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1403 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1404 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1405 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1406 old POP protocol.
1407
1408 * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1409
1410 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1411 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1412 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1413 happens to exist on your X server).
1414
1415 * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1416
1417 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1418 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1419 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1420
1421 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1422 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1423
1424 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1425
1426 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1427 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1428 does not happen.
1429
1430 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1431
1432 We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1433 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1434 makes the problem stop:
1435
1436 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1437 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1438 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1439 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1440
1441 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1442 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1443
1444 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1445 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1446 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1447
1448 * Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1449
1450 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1451 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1452
1453 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1454 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1455 with the user.
1456
1457 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1458 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1459 communicate with the subprocess.
1460
1461 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1462 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1463 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1464 stdin.
1465
1466 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1467
1468 For Perl 4:
1469
1470 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1471 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1472 ***************
1473 *** 68,74 ****
1474 $rcfile=".perldb";
1475 }
1476 else {
1477 ! $console = "con";
1478 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1479 }
1480
1481 --- 68,74 ----
1482 $rcfile=".perldb";
1483 }
1484 else {
1485 ! $console = "";
1486 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1487 }
1488
1489
1490 For Perl 5:
1491 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1492 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1493 ***************
1494 *** 22,28 ****
1495 $rcfile=".perldb";
1496 }
1497 elsif (-e "con") {
1498 ! $console = "con";
1499 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1500 }
1501 else {
1502 --- 22,28 ----
1503 $rcfile=".perldb";
1504 }
1505 elsif (-e "con") {
1506 ! $console = "";
1507 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1508 }
1509 else {
1510
1511 * Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1512
1513 Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1514 others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1515
1516 When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1517 hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1518 by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1519 finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1520 instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1521 can find out the process id.
1522
1523 It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1524 M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1525 start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1526 programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1527 work.
1528
1529 * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1530
1531 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1532
1533 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1534 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1535 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1536
1537 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1538 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1539 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1540 incorrect library functions.
1541
1542 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1543
1544 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1545 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1546 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1547 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1548 the front of your PATH environment variable.
1549
1550 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1551 like make-docfile.
1552
1553 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1554 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1555 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1556 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1557
1558 * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1559 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
1560
1561 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
1562 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1563 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
1564 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1565
1566 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1567 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1568 Lisp.
1569
1570 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1571 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1572 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1573 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1574 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1575 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1576 explains this issue in more detail.
1577
1578 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1579 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1580 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1581 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1582 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1583 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1584 properly truncated.
1585
1586 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1587
1588 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1589
1590 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1591 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1592 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1593 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1594 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1595 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1596 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1597 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1598 your system works as before.
1599
1600 * On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1601
1602 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1603 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1604
1605 * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1606
1607 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1608 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1609 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1610
1611 * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1612
1613 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1614 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1615 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1616 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1617 does not work with this version of ncurses.
1618
1619 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1620
1621 * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1622
1623 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1624 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1625 as GCC.
1626
1627 * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1628 on GNU/Linux systems.
1629
1630 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
1631 1.3.75.
1632
1633 * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1634
1635 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1636 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1637 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1638 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1639
1640 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1641
1642 * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1643
1644 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1645 version of Solaris that you are using.
1646
1647 * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1648
1649 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1650 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1651 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1652 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1653 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1654
1655 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1656 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1657 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1658 for certain.
1659
1660 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1661 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1662 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1663
1664 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1665 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1666
1667 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1668 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1669
1670 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1671 Solaris 2.5.
1672
1673 * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1674
1675 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1676 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1677 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1678
1679 * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1680 Emacs built with Motif.
1681
1682 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1683 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1684
1685 * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1686
1687 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1688 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1689 find that string, and take out the spaces.
1690
1691 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1692
1693 * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1694
1695 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1696 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1697 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1698 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1699 command `swap -l'.
1700
1701 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1702 line like this:
1703
1704 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1705
1706 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1707 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1708 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1709 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1710 information.
1711
1712 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1713 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1714 on the network that can log on to the host.
1715
1716 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1717 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1718 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1719 icons.
1720
1721 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1722 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1723 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1724 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1725
1726 * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1727 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1728
1729 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1730 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1731 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1732
1733 * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1734
1735 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1736 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1737 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1738 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1739
1740 * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1741 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
1742
1743 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1744
1745 * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1746 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1747
1748 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1749 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1750 Definitions" to make them defined.
1751
1752 * On SunOS, you get linker errors
1753 ld: Undefined symbol
1754 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1755 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1756
1757 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1758 or link libXmu statically.
1759
1760 * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1761 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1762 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1763
1764 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1765 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1766 you build Emacs:
1767
1768 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1769 chmod 664 libIM.a
1770 ranlib libIM.a
1771
1772 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1773 Makefile).
1774
1775 * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1776
1777 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1778 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1779
1780 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1781
1782 * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1783 Windows.
1784
1785 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1786 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1787 problem.
1788
1789 * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1790
1791 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1792 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1793 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1794 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1795 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1796
1797 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1798 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1799 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1800 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1801
1802 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1803 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1804 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1805 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1806 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1807
1808 * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1809
1810 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1811 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1812
1813 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1814
1815 * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1816
1817 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1818 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1819 Emacs's configure script.
1820
1821 * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1822
1823 This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1824 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1825 configure script.
1826
1827 * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1828
1829 If you get errors such as
1830
1831 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1832 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1833 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1834
1835 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1836 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1837 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1838 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1839 ones available when you build Emacs.
1840
1841 * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1842 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1843
1844 This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1845 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1846 configures the X server.
1847
1848 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1849 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1850 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1851 EOF
1852
1853 xmodmap - << EOF
1854 clear mod1
1855 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1856 add mod1 = Meta_L
1857 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1858 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1859 EOF
1860
1861 * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1862
1863 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1864 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1865 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1866 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1867 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1868
1869 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1870
1871 * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1872
1873 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1874 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1875
1876 * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1877
1878 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1879 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1880 to allocate ptys reliably.
1881
1882 * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1883
1884 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1885 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1886 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1887 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1888 syms.h.
1889
1890 * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1891
1892 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1893 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1894
1895 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1896 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1897 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1898 networked and non-networked machines.
1899
1900 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1901
1902 ** Networked Case
1903
1904 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1905 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1906 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1907
1908 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1909
1910 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1911 lines:
1912
1913 order hosts, bind
1914 multi on
1915
1916 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1917 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1918 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1919 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1920
1921 ** Non-Networked Case
1922
1923 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1924 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1925 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1926 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1927 file is not necessary with this approach.
1928
1929 * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1930 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1931
1932 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1933 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1934
1935 #if ThreadedX
1936 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1937 #endif
1938
1939 to:
1940
1941 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1942 #if ThreadedX
1943 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1944 #endif
1945 #endif
1946
1947 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1948 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1949 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1950 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1951 definition for your type of machine and system.
1952
1953 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1954 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1955 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1956
1957 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1958 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1959 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1960 patch.
1961
1962 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1963 he changed
1964 #define ThreadedX YES
1965 to
1966 #define ThreadedX NO
1967 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1968 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1969 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1970
1971 * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1972 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1973
1974 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1975 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1976 another escape character in kermit. One user did
1977
1978 set escape-character 17
1979
1980 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1981
1982 * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1983
1984 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1985
1986 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1987
1988 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1989 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1990 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1991 the resource prevents the problem.
1992
1993 * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1994
1995 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1996 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1997
1998 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1999 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2000 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2001 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2002 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2003
2004 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2005 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2006
2007 * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
2008
2009 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
2010 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2011 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2012 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2013 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2014 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2015 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2016 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2017 not to work.
2018
2019 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2020 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2021 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2022 same directory where system header files are kept.
2023
2024 * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2025
2026 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2027 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2028 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2029 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2030 described in the Solaris FAQ
2031 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2032 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2033
2034 * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2035
2036 This shell command should fix it:
2037
2038 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2039
2040 * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2041
2042 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2043 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2044 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2045 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2046 GCC.
2047
2048 * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2049
2050 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2051 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2052 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2053
2054 * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2055
2056 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2057 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2058 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2059 the Files menu).
2060
2061 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2062 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2063 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2064 workaround can be found.
2065
2066 * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2067
2068 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2069 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2070 fonts, so it does not work.
2071
2072 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2073 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2074 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2075 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2076 resources affect Emacs also:
2077
2078 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2079 *Background: scoBackground
2080 *Foreground: scoForeground
2081
2082 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2083 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2084
2085 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2086 Emacs*Background: white
2087 Emacs*Foreground: black
2088
2089 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2090 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2091 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2092 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2093 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2094 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2095 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2096 Open Desktop display.
2097
2098 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2099 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2100
2101 * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2102
2103 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2104 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2105
2106 * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2107
2108 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2109 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2110 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2111 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2112 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2113 install them and rebuild Emacs.
2114
2115 * Loading fonts is very slow.
2116
2117 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2118 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2119 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2120 "fonts.scale".
2121
2122 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2123 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2124
2125 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2126 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2127 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2128
2129 * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2130
2131 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2132 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2133 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2134 treated as control characters.
2135
2136 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2137 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2138
2139 * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2140
2141 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2142 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2143 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2144 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2145 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2146
2147 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2148 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2149
2150 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2151
2152 * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2153
2154 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2155 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2156
2157 * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2158 segmentation fault and core dump.
2159
2160 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2161 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2162
2163 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2164
2165 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2166 untar it :-).
2167
2168 * Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2169
2170 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2171
2172 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2173
2174 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2175
2176 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2177 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2178
2179 * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2180
2181 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2182 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2183 workaround/fix is:
2184
2185 cd /lib
2186 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2187 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2188
2189 * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2190
2191 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2192 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2193 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2194 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2195 toolkit.)
2196
2197 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2198 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2199 X11R4, then use it in the link.
2200
2201 * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2202
2203 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2204 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2205 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2206 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2207
2208 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2209
2210 * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2211
2212 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2213 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2214 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2215 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2216
2217 if ($?EMACS) then
2218 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2219 unset edit
2220 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2221 endif
2222 endif
2223
2224 * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2225 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2226
2227 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2228 emacs*Cursor: black
2229 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2230 that isn't a color.)
2231
2232 The fix is to correct your X resources.
2233
2234 * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2235
2236 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2237 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2238 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2239
2240 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2241 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2242
2243 * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2244
2245 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2246 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2247 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2248
2249 * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2250
2251 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2252 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2253
2254 * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2255
2256 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2257 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2258 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2259 font.
2260
2261 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2262 your font path, like this:
2263
2264 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2265
2266 * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2267
2268 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2269
2270 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2271
2272 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2273 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2274 want, rewrite the resource.
2275
2276 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2277 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2278 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2279
2280 * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2281
2282 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2283 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2284 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2285 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2286 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2287 and Solaris in version 19.29.
2288
2289 * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2290
2291 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2292 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2293 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2294 hand.
2295
2296 * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2297
2298 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2299 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2300 such as bash.
2301
2302 * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2303
2304 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2305 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2306 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2307 communicating through pipes.
2308
2309 * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2310
2311 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2312 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2313 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2314 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2315 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2316 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2317 obtain the destination address.
2318
2319 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2320 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2321 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
2322 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
2323 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2324 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2325 of this writing, these official versions are available:
2326
2327 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2328 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2329 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2330 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2331 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2332
2333 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2334 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2335
2336 * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2337
2338 Could not load program emacs
2339 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2340 Error was: Exec format error
2341
2342 or this one:
2343
2344 Could not load program .emacs
2345 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2346 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2347 Error was: Exec format error
2348
2349 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2350 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2351
2352 * On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2353
2354 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2355 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2356
2357 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2358 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2359 X11Dev... with smit.
2360
2361 * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2362
2363 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2364 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2365 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2366 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2367
2368 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2369
2370 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2371
2372 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2373 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2374 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2375
2376 * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2377
2378 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2379 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2380 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2381
2382 * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2383
2384 These control the actions of Emacs.
2385 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2386 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2387 "load" will search.
2388
2389 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2390 of them, then try again.
2391
2392 * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2393
2394 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2395 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2396 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2397
2398 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2399 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2400 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2401 configure script) that reads:
2402 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2403 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2404 the kernel bug.
2405
2406 * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2407 directly with an X server.
2408
2409 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2410 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2411 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2412 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2413 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2414 have made the key binding correctly.
2415
2416 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2417 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2418 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2419 default.
2420
2421 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2422
2423 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2424 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2425
2426 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2427 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2428 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2429 modifier bit not otherwise used.
2430
2431 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2432 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2433 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2434 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2435
2436 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2437 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2438
2439 * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2440
2441 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2442 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2443 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2444 value is just ten seconds.
2445
2446 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2447
2448 * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2449
2450 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2451 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2452 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2453 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2454
2455 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2456 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2457
2458 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2459 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2460 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2461 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2462
2463 * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2464
2465 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2466 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2467 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2468
2469 * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2470
2471 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2472
2473 * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2474 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2475 * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2476 * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2477
2478 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2479 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2480 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2481 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2482
2483 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2484 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2485
2486 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2487 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2488
2489 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2490
2491 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2492 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2493 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2494 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2495 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2496 be careful not to lose the others.
2497
2498 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2499
2500 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2501
2502 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2503 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2504 again to say this:
2505
2506 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2507
2508 * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2509
2510 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2511
2512 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2513
2514 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2515
2516 * Self documentation messages are garbled.
2517
2518 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2519 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2520 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2521
2522 * Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2523
2524 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2525 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2526
2527 * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2528
2529 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2530
2531 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2532 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2533 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2534 but tty is giving it back 3.
2535
2536 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2537 word:
2538
2539 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2540
2541 should be changed to:
2542
2543 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2544
2545 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2546 and into .login.
2547
2548 * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2549
2550 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2551
2552 * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2553 * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2554
2555 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2556 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2557 the environment.
2558
2559 * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2560
2561 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2562 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2563 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2564 with a floating point option other than the default.
2565
2566 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2567 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2568 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2569 floating point option: -fsoft.
2570
2571 * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2572
2573 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2574 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2575 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2576
2577 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2578 whether this problem is present on a given system.
2579
2580 * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2581 as a concentrator.
2582
2583 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
2584 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2585
2586 * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2587
2588 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2589 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2590
2591 * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2592 terminal type.
2593
2594 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2595 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2596 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2597 emulates.
2598
2599 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2600 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2601 it only if it is undefined.
2602
2603 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2604
2605 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2606 happen in a non-login shell.
2607
2608 * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2609
2610 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2611 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2612 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2613 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2614
2615 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2616 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2617 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2618
2619 The easy way to do this is to put
2620
2621 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2622
2623 in your site-init.el file.
2624
2625 * Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2626
2627 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2628 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2629 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2630 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2631
2632 * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2633
2634 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2635
2636 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2637
2638 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2639 Here is how to make more of them.
2640
2641 % cd /dev
2642 % ls pty*
2643 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2644 % /etc/crpty 8
2645 # creates eight new pty's
2646
2647 * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2648
2649 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2650 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2651
2652 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2653 space available on the machine.
2654
2655 On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2656 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2657 for large blocks (many pages).
2658
2659 * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2660 * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2661 * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2662 * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2663
2664 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2665 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2666 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2667
2668 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2669 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2670 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2671 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2672 when unpacking the shell archive.
2673
2674 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2675 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2676 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2677
2678 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2679 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2680
2681 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2682 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2683 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2684 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2685 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2686 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2687 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2688 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2689 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2690 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2691 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2692 and remake temacs.
2693 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2694
2695 * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2696
2697 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2698 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2699 space than was allocated.
2700
2701 This could be caused by
2702 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2703 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2704 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2705 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2706 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2707 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2708 deleting that file.
2709 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2710 (not from the directory you expected).
2711 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2712 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2713 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2714 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2715 the space required.
2716
2717 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2718 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2719
2720 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2721 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2722 problem.
2723
2724 * Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2725
2726 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2727 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2728 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2729 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2730
2731 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2732 than the corresponding .el file.
2733
2734 * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2735
2736 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2737
2738 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2739 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2740 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2741 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2742
2743 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2744 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2745 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2746 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2747 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2748
2749 * Compilation errors on VMS.
2750
2751 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2752 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2753 This is not an error. Ignore it.
2754
2755 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2756 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2757
2758 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2759 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2760 char c = -1, d = 1;
2761 int i;
2762
2763 i = d ? c : d;
2764 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2765 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2766 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2767
2768 * rmail gets error getting new mail
2769
2770 rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2771 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2772 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2773
2774 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2775 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2776 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2777 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2778 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2779 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2780 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2781
2782 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2783 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2784 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2785 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2786
2787 chgrp mail movemail
2788 chmod 2755 movemail
2789
2790 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2791 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2792 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2793 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2794 make install.
2795
2796 chgrp mail movemail
2797 chmod 2755 movemail
2798
2799 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2800 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2801 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2802 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2803 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2804 directory copy is ineffective.
2805
2806 * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2807
2808 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2809 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2810 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2811 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2812 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2813 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2814 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2815 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2816
2817 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2818
2819 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2820 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2821 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2822
2823 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2824 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2825 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2826 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2827 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2828 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2829
2830 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2831 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2832 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2833 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2834 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2835 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2836 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2837 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2838 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2839
2840 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2841 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2842 codes. You might as well try it.
2843
2844 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2845 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2846 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2847 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2848 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2849 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2850 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2851 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2852
2853 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2854 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2855 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2856 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2857 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2858 control handling.)
2859
2860 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2861 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2862 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2863 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2864 other control characters are already used by emacs.
2865
2866 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2867 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2868 order to continue.
2869
2870 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2871 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2872 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2873 automatically. Here is an example:
2874
2875 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2876
2877 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2878 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2879 manually.
2880
2881 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2882 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2883 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2884 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2885 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2886 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2887 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2888 of inferior systems.
2889
2890 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2891
2892 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2893 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2894 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2895 that wants to use flow control.
2896
2897 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2898 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2899 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2900
2901 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2902 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2903 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2904
2905 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2906
2907 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2908 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2909 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2910 control on the local system.
2911
2912 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2913 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2914 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2915 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
2916
2917 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2918 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2919 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2920
2921 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2922 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2923 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2924 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2925
2926 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2927
2928 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2929 info.
2930
2931 * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2932
2933 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2934 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2935 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2936
2937 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2938 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2939 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2940 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2941 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2942 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2943 There are several possibilities:
2944
2945 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2946
2947 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2948 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2949
2950 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2951 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2952 by termcap.
2953
2954 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2955 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2956 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2957 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2958 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2959 tested on many kinds of terminals.
2960
2961 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
2962
2963 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2964 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2965 for certain terminals.
2966
2967 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2968 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2969
2970 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2971 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2972
2973 * Output from Control-V is slow.
2974
2975 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2976 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2977 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2978 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2979 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2980 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2981
2982 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2983 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2984 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2985 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2986 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2987 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2988 time as the operations really take.
2989
2990 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2991 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2992 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2993 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2994 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2995 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2996 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2997 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2998 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2999 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
3000
3001 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
3002 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
3003 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
3004 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
3005 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
3006 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
3007 `cm' string.
3008
3009 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
3010 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3011 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3012
3013 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3014 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3015
3016 * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3017
3018 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3019
3020 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3021 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3022
3023 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3024
3025 * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3026
3027 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3028 after a day or two.
3029
3030 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3031 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3032 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3033 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3034 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3035 to it.
3036
3037 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3038 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3039 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3040 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3041 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3042 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3043
3044 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3045 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3046 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3047 You can probably access help-command via f1.
3048
3049 * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3050 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3051 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3052 causes it.
3053
3054 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3055 call in the RFS server.
3056
3057 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3058 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3059 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3060 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3061
3062 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3063
3064 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3065 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3066 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3067 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3068 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3069 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3070 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3071
3072 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3073
3074 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3075 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3076 retrieving revision 1.2
3077 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3078 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3079 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3080 ***************
3081 *** 163,169 ****
3082 /*
3083 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3084 */
3085 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3086 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3087 else
3088 {
3089 --- 166,172 ----
3090 /*
3091 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3092 */
3093 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3094 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3095 else
3096 {
3097
3098 * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3099
3100 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3101
3102 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3103 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3104
3105 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3106 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3107 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3108 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3109 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3110 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3111 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3112
3113 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3114 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3115 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3116 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3117 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3118 Lisp_Object *args;
3119 ...
3120 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3121 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3122 Lisp_Object *args;
3123 Lisp_Object tem;
3124 ...
3125 tem = args[i];
3126 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3127 causes the problem to go away.
3128 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3129 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3130
3131 * 68000 C compiler problems
3132
3133 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3134 These are some that have been observed.
3135
3136 ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3137 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3138 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3139
3140 ** "cannot reclaim" error.
3141
3142 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3143 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3144 simpler expressions.
3145
3146 ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3147
3148 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3149 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3150
3151 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3152
3153 lose (arg)
3154 struct foo arg;
3155 {
3156 test ((int *) arg.y);
3157 }
3158
3159 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3160 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3161 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3162
3163 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3164 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3165
3166 * C compilers lose on returning unions
3167
3168 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3169 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3170 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3171
3172 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3173 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3174