1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
4 * Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
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
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:
22 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
24 (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
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.
30 * Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
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
37 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
39 * Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
41 The error message might be something like this:
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
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
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
61 * Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
63 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
64 C backtrace printed by GDB:
66 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
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,
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
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
88 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
89 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
94 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
95 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
98 * JPEG images aren't displayed.
100 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
101 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
103 * Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
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:
109 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
110 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
114 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
116 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
118 #else /* debugging enabled */
122 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
124 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
126 #else /* debugging enabled */
130 * Improving performance with slow X connections
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.
138 If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
139 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
141 * Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
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
147 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
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
154 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
156 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
158 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
160 * Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
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
168 * Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
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.
175 A workaround for this is to add something like
177 emacs.waitForWM: false
179 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
180 frame's parameter list, like this:
182 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
184 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
186 * Underlines appear at the wrong position.
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
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
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
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.
209 * Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
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.
215 * Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
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
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"
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.
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
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'.
253 * Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
255 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
256 emulation for which it is set up.
258 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
259 Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
260 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
261 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
262 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
263 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
266 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
267 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
268 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
271 * Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
273 Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
274 and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
276 Help text that is displayed in a tooltip on other window systems, on
277 Windows is printed in the echo area, since tooltips are not yet
278 available. Help text for pop-up menu items is not displayed at all.
280 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
281 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
282 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
283 after moving back into it.
285 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
286 not as severely as in 21.1.
288 Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
289 characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
291 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
292 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
294 Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
295 These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
296 the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
297 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
298 work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
299 you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
300 the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
301 ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
302 appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
305 Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
306 applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
307 is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
308 but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
309 means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
310 Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
311 Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
312 set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
314 * The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
316 This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
317 libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
318 install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
319 where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
320 probably isn't limited to that system.
322 You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
323 and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
324 which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
325 which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
326 generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
328 (If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
329 libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
331 * Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
333 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
334 (RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
335 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
336 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
337 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
338 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
339 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
340 Emacs excutable to fail with the above message.
342 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
343 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
344 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
345 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
347 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
348 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
349 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
350 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
351 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
352 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
353 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
354 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
357 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
358 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
359 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
360 to work around the problem.
362 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
363 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
364 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
365 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
367 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
369 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
371 * Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
373 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
374 via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
375 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
377 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
379 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
380 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
382 * Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
384 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
385 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
386 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
387 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
388 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
389 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
391 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
393 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
395 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
398 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
399 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
402 * Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
405 * Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
406 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
408 * Font Lock displays portions of the bufefr in incorrect faces.
410 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
411 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
412 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
413 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
414 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
415 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
416 patological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
417 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
418 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
419 to the end of a very large buffer.
421 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
422 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
423 fontification by setting the variable
424 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
425 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
427 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
428 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
430 * Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
432 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
433 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
434 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
435 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
436 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
438 * Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
440 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
441 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
442 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
443 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
444 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
447 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
448 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
449 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' directory. To
450 force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the variable
451 `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the client's
452 executable. For example:
454 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
456 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
457 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
459 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
462 * The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
463 with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
464 fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
467 Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
468 If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
469 CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
471 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
472 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
473 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
475 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
478 - (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
479 + ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
480 + (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
483 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
484 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
485 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
486 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
488 +;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
489 +;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
494 * On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
495 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
496 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
497 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
499 * The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
500 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
501 longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.2 fix that.
503 --- psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:23:31 1.1
504 +++ psgml-edit.el 2001/03/03 00:24:22
507 - (before-change-function nil)
508 - (after-change-function nil))
509 + (before-change-functions nil)
510 + (after-change-functions nil))
511 (setq selective-display t)
512 @@ -1544,3 +1544,3 @@
513 (buffer-read-only nil)
514 - (before-change-function nil)
515 + (before-change-functions nil)
516 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
517 @@ -1596,3 +1596,3 @@
518 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
519 - (let (before-change-function
520 + (let (before-change-functions
521 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
522 @@ -1613,3 +1613,3 @@
524 - before-change-function)
525 + before-change-functions)
526 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
527 @@ -1646,3 +1646,3 @@
528 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
529 - (let ((before-change-function nil))
530 + (let ((before-change-functions nil))
531 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
532 Index: psgml-other.el
533 --- psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:23:42 1.1
534 +++ psgml-other.el 2001/03/03 00:30:05
537 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
541 - (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
542 - sgml-max-menu-size))))
543 +;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
544 +;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
545 + (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
546 + (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
547 + sgml-max-menu-size))
550 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
552 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
553 - (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
554 - (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
555 (after-change-functions nil)
556 - (before-change-functions nil))
557 + (before-change-functions nil)
558 + (modified (buffer-modified-p))
559 + (buffer-undo-list t)
561 (put-text-property start end 'face face)
562 - (when (< start end)
563 - (put-text-property (1- end) end 'rear-nonsticky '(face)))))
564 + (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
565 + (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
567 Index: psgml-parse.el
568 --- psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:23:57 1.1
569 +++ psgml-parse.el 2001/03/03 00:29:56
572 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
575 @@ -2493,8 +2495,8 @@
576 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
577 - (when after-change-function ;***
578 - (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
579 + (when after-change-functions ;***
580 + (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
582 - after-change-function)
583 - (setq before-change-function nil
584 - after-change-function nil))
585 + after-change-functions)
586 + (setq before-change-functions nil
587 + after-change-functions nil))
588 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
589 @@ -2878,6 +2880,5 @@
590 "Set initial state of parsing"
591 - (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
592 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
593 - (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
594 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
595 + (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
596 + (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
597 + '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
598 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
599 @@ -3925,7 +3926,7 @@
601 - (unless before-change-function
602 - (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
603 + (unless before-change-functions
604 + (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
606 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
607 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change))
608 + (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
609 + (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change)))
610 (sgml-with-parser-syntax-ro
612 * The Calc package fails to build and signals errors with Emacs 21.
614 Apply the following patches which reportedly fix several problems:
616 --- calc-ext.el.~1~ Sun Apr 3 02:26:34 1994
617 +++ calc-ext.el Wed Sep 18 17:35:01 1996
618 @@ -1354,6 +1354,25 @@
619 (calc-fancy-prefix 'calc-inverse-flag "Inverse..." n)
622 +(defconst calc-fancy-prefix-map
623 + (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
624 + (define-key map [t] 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
625 + (define-key map (vector meta-prefix-char t) 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
626 + (define-key map [switch-frame] nil)
627 + (define-key map [?\C-u] 'universal-argument)
628 + (define-key map [?0] 'digit-argument)
629 + (define-key map [?1] 'digit-argument)
630 + (define-key map [?2] 'digit-argument)
631 + (define-key map [?3] 'digit-argument)
632 + (define-key map [?4] 'digit-argument)
633 + (define-key map [?5] 'digit-argument)
634 + (define-key map [?6] 'digit-argument)
635 + (define-key map [?7] 'digit-argument)
636 + (define-key map [?8] 'digit-argument)
637 + (define-key map [?9] 'digit-argument)
639 + "Keymap used while processing calc-fancy-prefix.")
641 (defun calc-fancy-prefix (flag msg n)
644 @@ -1364,6 +1383,8 @@
645 (message (if prefix msg "")))
647 (not calc-is-keypad-press)
648 + (if (boundp 'overriding-terminal-local-map)
649 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map calc-fancy-prefix-map)
650 (let ((event (calc-read-key t)))
651 (if (eq (setq last-command-char (car event)) ?\C-u)
653 @@ -1376,9 +1397,18 @@
654 (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
655 (eq last-command-char ?-))
656 (calc-unread-command)
657 - (digit-argument n))))))
658 + (digit-argument n)))))))
660 (setq calc-is-keypad-press nil)
662 +(defun calc-fancy-prefix-other-key (arg)
664 + (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
665 + (and (>= last-command-char 0) (< last-command-char ? )
666 + (not (eq last-command-char meta-prefix-char))))
667 + (calc-wrapper)) ; clear flags if not a Calc command.
668 + (calc-unread-command)
669 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map nil))
671 (defun calc-invert-func ()
675 --- Makefile.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:45 1996
676 +++ Makefile Thu Nov 30 15:09:45 2000
681 -MAINT = -l calc-maint.elc
682 +MAINT = -l calc-maint.el
684 # Control whether intermediate files are kept.
689 # All this because "-l calc-maint" doesn't work.
690 -maint: calc-maint.elc
691 -calc-maint.elc: calc-maint.el
692 - cp calc-maint.el calc-maint.elc
694 +maint: calc-maint.el
696 # Create an Emacs TAGS file
700 --- calc-aent.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:36 1996
701 +++ calc-aent.el Tue Nov 21 18:34:33 2000
703 (calc-minibuffer-contains
704 "\\`\\([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\"\\)*[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\\'"))
706 - (setq alg-exp (buffer-string))
707 + (setq alg-exp (field-string))
708 (and (> (length alg-exp) 0) (setq calc-previous-alg-entry alg-exp))
711 @@ -393,14 +393,14 @@
713 (defun calcAlg-enter ()
715 - (let* ((str (buffer-string))
716 + (let* ((str (field-string))
717 (exp (and (> (length str) 0)
719 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
720 (math-read-exprs str)))))
721 (if (eq (car-safe exp) 'error)
723 - (goto-char (point-min))
724 + (goto-char (field-beginning))
725 (forward-char (nth 1 exp))
727 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message
728 @@ -455,14 +455,14 @@
730 (if (calc-minibuffer-contains ".*[@oh] *[^'m ]+[^'m]*\\'")
732 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
733 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
737 (defun calcDigit-edit ()
739 (calc-unread-command)
740 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
741 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
746 --- calc.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:47 1996
747 +++ calc.el Wed Nov 22 13:08:49 2000
748 @@ -2051,11 +2051,11 @@
749 ;; Exercise for the reader: Figure out why this is a good precaution!
750 (or (boundp 'calc-buffer)
751 (use-local-map minibuffer-local-map))
752 - (let ((str (buffer-string)))
753 + (let ((str (field-string)))
754 (setq calc-digit-value (save-excursion
755 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
756 (math-read-number str))))
757 - (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (buffer-size) 0))
758 + (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (field-end) (field-beginning)))
761 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message " [Bad format]"))
762 @@ -2071,7 +2071,7 @@
764 (defun calc-minibuffer-contains (rex)
766 - (goto-char (point-min))
767 + (goto-char (field-end (point-min)))
771 @@ -2158,10 +2158,8 @@
772 (upcase last-command-char))))
776 - (goto-char (point-min))
778 - "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'")))
779 + (calc-minibuffer-contains
780 + "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'"))
781 (if (and (memq last-command-char '(?@ ?o ?h ?\' ?m))
782 (string-match " " calc-hms-format))
784 @@ -2190,7 +2188,7 @@
785 ((eq last-command 'calcDigit-start)
787 (t (backward-delete-char 1)))
788 - (if (= (buffer-size) 0)
789 + (if (= (field-beginning) (field-end))
791 (setq last-command-char 13)
792 (calcDigit-nondigit)))
794 * TeX'ing the Calc manual fails.
796 The following patches allow to build the Calc manual using texinfo.tex
797 from Emacs 19.34 distribution:
799 *** calc-maint.e~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:26 1996
800 --- calc-maint.el Sun Dec 10 14:32:38 2000
804 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
805 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
806 ! (setq midpos (point))
807 (insert "@end tex\n")
808 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
812 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
813 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
814 ! (setq midpos (point-marker))
815 (insert "@end tex\n")
816 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
818 *** Makefile.~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:24 1996
819 --- Makefile Sun Dec 10 14:44:00 2000
822 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
825 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
826 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
827 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
828 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
829 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
832 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
835 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
836 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
837 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
838 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
839 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
841 *** calc.texinfo.~1~ Thu Oct 10 18:18:56 1996
842 --- calc.texinfo Mon Dec 11 08:25:00 2000
846 % Because makeinfo.c exists, we can't just define new commands.
847 % So instead, we take over little-used existing commands.
849 + % Suggested by Karl Berry <karl@@freefriends.org>
850 + \gdef\!{\mskip-\thinmuskip}
851 % Redefine @cite{text} to act like $text$ in regular TeX.
852 % Info will typeset this same as @samp{text}.
853 \gdef\goodtex{\tex \let\rm\goodrm \let\t\ttfont \turnoffactive}
856 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
857 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
858 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
859 ! to move this vector to the stack; @pxref{Trail Commands}.)
861 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
862 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
864 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
865 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
866 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
867 ! to move this vector to the stack; see @ref{Trail Commands}.)
869 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
870 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
872 * Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
874 As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
875 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
876 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
877 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
878 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
879 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
880 text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
881 into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
882 buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
884 To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
886 * Problems when using Emacs with UTF-8 locales
888 Some systems, including recent versions of GNU/Linux, have terminals
889 or X11 subsystems that can be configured to provide Unicode/UTF-8
890 input and display. Normally, such a system sets environment variables
891 such as LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL to a string which ends with a
892 `.UTF-8'. For example, a system like this in a French locale might
893 use `fr_FR.UTF-8' as the value of LANG.
895 Since Unicode support in Emacs, as of v21.1, is not yet complete (see
896 the previous entry in this file), UTF-8 support is not enabled by
897 default, even in UTF-8 locales. Thus, some Emacs features, such as
898 non-ASCII keyboard input, might appear to be broken in these locales.
899 To solve these problems, you need to turn on some options in your
900 `.emacs' file. Specifically, the following customizations should make
901 Emacs work correctly with UTF-8 input and text:
903 (setq locale-coding-system 'utf-8)
904 (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
905 (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
906 (set-selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
907 (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
909 * The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
911 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
912 slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
913 e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
914 Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
915 correctly by Emacs 21.
917 * Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
919 The error message might be something like this:
921 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
923 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
924 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
925 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
928 * On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
929 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
930 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
931 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
932 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
934 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
935 process invokes Emacs several times.
937 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
938 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
941 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
942 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
943 specified run-time search path in the executable.
945 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
947 * On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
948 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
949 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
950 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
951 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
952 and the default CFLAGS.
954 * Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
956 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
959 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
961 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
962 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
963 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
965 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
967 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
968 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
970 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
971 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
973 * Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
975 A typical error message might be something like
977 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
979 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
980 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
983 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
985 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
986 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
987 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
989 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
990 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
991 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
993 * Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
995 The typical error message might be like this:
997 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
999 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
1000 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
1001 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
1002 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
1003 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
1004 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
1005 its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
1007 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
1008 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
1010 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
1013 * Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
1015 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
1016 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
1017 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.3
1018 with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other systems as well. To
1019 avoid this problem, switch to using the standard ftp client. On a
1022 update-alternatives --config ftpd
1024 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
1026 * Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
1028 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
1029 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
1030 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
1031 work when an antivirus package is installed.
1033 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
1034 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
1035 or disable it entirely.
1037 * On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
1039 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
1040 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
1041 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
1042 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
1044 * Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
1045 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
1046 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
1049 * After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
1051 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1052 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1053 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1054 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1055 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1056 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1057 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1059 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1060 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1061 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1062 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1063 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1066 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1068 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1069 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1071 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1073 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1074 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1075 keys can serve as Meta.
1077 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1078 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1080 * On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
1081 remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
1084 Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
1085 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
1086 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
1088 * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
1090 Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
1091 It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
1092 system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
1093 the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
1095 * Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
1097 This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
1098 and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
1101 This bug was reported to Sun as
1103 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
1104 Bug Reports: 4463537
1106 Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
1107 reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
1110 Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
1111 the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
1112 can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
1114 * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
1116 This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
1117 assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
1118 To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
1119 or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
1120 Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
1122 * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
1124 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
1126 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
1127 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
1129 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1130 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1131 /******************************************************************
1133 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
1140 + char* begin = NULL;
1144 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
1145 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
1147 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
1149 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1150 + if (begin != NULL) {
1151 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1155 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
1160 * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
1162 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
1164 * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
1166 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
1167 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
1169 * The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1171 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1172 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1173 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1174 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1177 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1178 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1180 * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
1181 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
1183 You can fix this by editing the file:
1185 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
1187 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
1189 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1193 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1195 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
1197 * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
1198 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
1200 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
1201 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
1203 * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
1205 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
1206 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
1207 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
1209 * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1211 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1212 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1213 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1214 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1217 * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
1219 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
1220 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
1221 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
1222 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
1223 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
1225 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
1226 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
1228 * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
1230 This problem manifests itself as an error message
1232 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
1234 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
1235 were built for an older system version,
1237 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
1239 made the problem go away.
1241 * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
1243 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
1246 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1248 * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1249 the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1250 next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1252 * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1254 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1255 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1258 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1260 * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1262 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1264 * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1266 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1268 * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1269 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1270 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1271 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1273 * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1274 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1275 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1278 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1279 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1280 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1281 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1283 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1284 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1285 + (insert-file-contents entity)
1286 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1287 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1288 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1290 * Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1292 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1295 * Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
1296 about a read-only tex output buffer.
1298 This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1299 versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1302 diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1303 *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1304 --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1307 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1308 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1309 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1310 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1313 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1315 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1316 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1317 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1318 ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1319 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1322 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1324 * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1325 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1327 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1329 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1330 003082 August 11, 1998.
1332 * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1334 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1335 (standard-display-european t)
1336 That should be changed to
1337 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1339 * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1341 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1342 supplies the `install-info' command.
1344 * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1346 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1347 rights, containing this text:
1349 --------------------------------
1350 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1351 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1352 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1357 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1359 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1360 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1362 --------------------------------
1364 * Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1366 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1367 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1368 of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1369 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1370 while, Emacs will print a message:
1372 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1374 A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
1376 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1377 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1378 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1380 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1381 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1382 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1384 * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1386 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1387 for character composition.
1389 * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1391 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1392 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1393 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
1396 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1398 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1400 * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1402 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1403 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1404 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1405 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1408 * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1410 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1411 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1412 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1413 support for 8-bit characters.
1415 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1416 this at your shell's prompt:
1420 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1421 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1424 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1425 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1426 Then rebuild the speller.
1428 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1429 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1431 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1432 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1433 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1434 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1435 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
1437 * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1438 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1440 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1441 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1444 * On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1445 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1447 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1449 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1450 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1451 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1452 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1453 AltGr has been pressed.
1455 * Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1457 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1458 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1459 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1460 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1462 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1463 well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1465 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1466 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1467 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1470 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1471 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1472 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1475 * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1477 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1478 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1479 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1480 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1481 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1482 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1483 are currently recommended for your host.
1485 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1486 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1487 105284-18 might fix it again.
1489 * On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1491 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1492 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1493 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1494 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
1496 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1497 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1498 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1499 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1502 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1503 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1506 * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1508 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1509 either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1510 calls for specifying this.
1512 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1513 mail-host-address to the value you want.
1515 * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1517 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1518 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1519 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1520 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1521 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1522 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1524 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1525 But you have to be root to do it.
1527 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1529 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1530 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1531 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1532 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1533 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1535 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1536 These changes take effect when you reboot.
1538 * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1540 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1541 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1542 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1543 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1545 Here's how to do this:
1547 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1549 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1550 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1553 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1555 * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1557 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1558 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1559 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1561 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1562 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1563 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1565 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1566 display all the characters Emacs supports.
1568 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1569 missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1570 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1571 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1572 of this character to display a space.
1574 * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1576 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1578 * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1580 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1581 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1582 lines do not overlap.
1584 * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1585 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1587 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1588 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1589 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1591 * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1592 directories that have the +t bit.
1594 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1595 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1596 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1597 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1599 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1600 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1602 * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1603 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1605 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1607 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1609 * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1612 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1613 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1614 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1615 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1616 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1617 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1619 * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1621 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1622 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1623 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1624 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1625 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1626 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1628 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1629 them to two different keys.
1631 * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1633 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1634 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1636 * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1638 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1639 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1640 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1641 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1642 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1645 * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1647 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1648 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1649 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1650 happens to exist on your X server).
1652 * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1654 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1655 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1656 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1658 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1659 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1661 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1663 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1664 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1667 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1669 We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1670 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1671 makes the problem stop:
1673 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1674 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1675 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1676 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1678 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1679 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1681 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1682 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1683 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1685 * Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1687 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1688 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1690 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1691 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1694 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1695 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1696 communicate with the subprocess.
1698 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1699 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1700 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1703 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1707 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1708 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1715 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1723 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1728 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1729 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1736 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1744 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1748 * Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1750 Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1751 others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1753 When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1754 hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1755 by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1756 finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1757 instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1758 can find out the process id.
1760 It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1761 M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1762 start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1763 programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1766 * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1768 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1770 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1771 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1772 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1774 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1775 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1776 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1777 incorrect library functions.
1779 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1781 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1782 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1783 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1784 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1785 the front of your PATH environment variable.
1787 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1790 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1791 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1792 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1793 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1795 * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1796 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
1798 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
1799 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1800 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
1801 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1803 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1804 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1807 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1808 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1809 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1810 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1811 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1812 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1813 explains this issue in more detail.
1815 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1816 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1817 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1818 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1819 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1820 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1823 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1825 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1827 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1828 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1829 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1830 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1831 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1832 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1833 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1834 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1835 your system works as before.
1837 * On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1839 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1840 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1842 * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1844 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1845 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1846 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1848 * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1850 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1851 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1852 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1853 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1854 does not work with this version of ncurses.
1856 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1858 * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1860 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1861 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1864 * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1865 on GNU/Linux systems.
1867 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
1870 * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1872 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1873 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1874 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1875 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1877 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1879 * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1881 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1882 version of Solaris that you are using.
1884 * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1886 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1887 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1888 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1889 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1890 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1892 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1893 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1894 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1897 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1898 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1899 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1901 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1902 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1904 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1905 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1907 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1910 * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1912 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1913 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1914 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1916 * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1917 Emacs built with Motif.
1919 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1920 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1922 * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1924 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1925 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1926 find that string, and take out the spaces.
1928 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1930 * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1932 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1933 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1934 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1935 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1938 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1941 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1943 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1944 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1945 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1946 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1949 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1950 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1951 on the network that can log on to the host.
1953 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1954 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1955 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1958 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1959 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1960 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1961 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1963 * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1964 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1966 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1967 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1968 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1970 * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1972 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1973 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1974 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1975 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1977 * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1978 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
1980 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1982 * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1983 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1985 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1986 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1987 Definitions" to make them defined.
1989 * On SunOS, you get linker errors
1990 ld: Undefined symbol
1991 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1992 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1994 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1995 or link libXmu statically.
1997 * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1998 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1999 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
2001 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2002 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2005 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2009 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2012 * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
2014 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
2015 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
2017 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
2019 * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
2022 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2023 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2026 * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
2028 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
2029 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
2030 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
2031 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
2032 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
2034 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
2035 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
2036 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
2037 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
2039 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
2040 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
2041 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
2042 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
2043 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
2045 * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
2047 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
2048 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
2050 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
2052 * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2054 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2055 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2056 Emacs's configure script.
2058 * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2060 This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
2061 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2064 * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
2066 If you get errors such as
2068 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
2069 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
2070 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
2072 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
2073 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
2074 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
2075 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
2076 ones available when you build Emacs.
2078 * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
2079 other non-English HP keyboards too).
2081 This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
2082 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
2083 configures the X server.
2085 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
2086 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
2087 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
2092 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
2094 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
2095 add mod2 = Mode_switch
2098 * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
2100 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
2101 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
2102 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
2103 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
2104 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
2106 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
2108 * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
2110 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
2111 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
2113 * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
2115 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2116 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2117 to allocate ptys reliably.
2119 * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
2121 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
2122 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
2123 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
2124 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
2127 * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
2129 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
2130 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
2132 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
2133 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
2134 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
2135 networked and non-networked machines.
2137 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
2141 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
2142 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
2143 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
2147 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
2153 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
2154 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
2155 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
2156 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
2158 ** Non-Networked Case
2160 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
2161 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
2162 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
2163 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
2164 file is not necessary with this approach.
2166 * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
2167 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
2169 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
2170 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
2173 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2178 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
2180 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2184 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
2185 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
2186 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
2187 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
2188 definition for your type of machine and system.
2190 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
2191 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
2192 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
2194 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
2195 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
2196 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
2199 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
2201 #define ThreadedX YES
2203 #define ThreadedX NO
2204 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
2205 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
2206 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
2208 * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
2209 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
2211 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
2212 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
2213 another escape character in kermit. One user did
2215 set escape-character 17
2217 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
2219 * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
2221 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
2223 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
2225 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
2226 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
2227 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
2228 the resource prevents the problem.
2230 * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
2232 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2233 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
2235 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2236 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2237 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2238 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2239 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2241 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2242 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2244 * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
2246 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
2247 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2248 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2249 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2250 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2251 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2252 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2253 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2256 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2257 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2258 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2259 same directory where system header files are kept.
2261 * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2263 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2264 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2265 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2266 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2267 described in the Solaris FAQ
2268 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2269 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2271 * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2273 This shell command should fix it:
2275 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2277 * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2279 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2280 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2281 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2282 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2285 * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2287 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2288 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2289 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2291 * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2293 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2294 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2295 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2298 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2299 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2300 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2301 workaround can be found.
2303 * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2305 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2306 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2307 fonts, so it does not work.
2309 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2310 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2311 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2312 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2313 resources affect Emacs also:
2315 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2316 *Background: scoBackground
2317 *Foreground: scoForeground
2319 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2320 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2322 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2323 Emacs*Background: white
2324 Emacs*Foreground: black
2326 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2327 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2328 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2329 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2330 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2331 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2332 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2333 Open Desktop display.
2335 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2336 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2338 * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2340 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2341 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2343 * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2345 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2346 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2347 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2348 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2349 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2350 install them and rebuild Emacs.
2352 * Loading fonts is very slow.
2354 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2355 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2356 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2359 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2360 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2362 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2363 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2364 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2366 * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2368 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2369 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2370 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2371 treated as control characters.
2373 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2374 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2376 * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2378 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2379 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2380 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2381 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2382 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2384 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2385 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2387 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2389 * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2391 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2392 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2394 * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2395 segmentation fault and core dump.
2397 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2398 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2400 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2402 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2405 * Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2407 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2409 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2411 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2413 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2414 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2416 * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2418 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2419 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2423 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2424 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2426 * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2428 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2429 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2430 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2431 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2434 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2435 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2436 X11R4, then use it in the link.
2438 * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2440 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2441 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2442 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2443 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2445 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2447 * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2449 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2450 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2451 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2452 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2455 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2457 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2461 * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2462 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2464 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2466 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2467 that isn't a color.)
2469 The fix is to correct your X resources.
2471 * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2473 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2474 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2475 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2477 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2478 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2480 * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2482 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2483 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2484 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2486 * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2488 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2489 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2491 * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2493 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2494 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2495 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2498 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2499 your font path, like this:
2501 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2503 * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2505 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2507 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2509 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2510 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2511 want, rewrite the resource.
2513 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2514 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2515 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2517 * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2519 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2520 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2521 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2522 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2523 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2524 and Solaris in version 19.29.
2526 * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2528 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2529 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2530 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2533 * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2535 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2536 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2539 * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2541 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2542 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2543 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2544 communicating through pipes.
2546 * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2548 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2549 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2550 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2551 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2552 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2553 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2554 obtain the destination address.
2556 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2557 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2558 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
2559 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
2560 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2561 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2562 of this writing, these official versions are available:
2564 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2565 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2566 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2567 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2568 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2570 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2571 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2573 * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2575 Could not load program emacs
2576 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2577 Error was: Exec format error
2581 Could not load program .emacs
2582 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2583 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2584 Error was: Exec format error
2586 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2587 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2589 * On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2591 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2592 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2594 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2595 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2596 X11Dev... with smit.
2598 * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2600 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2601 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2602 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2603 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2605 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2607 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2609 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2610 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2611 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2613 * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2615 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2616 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2617 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2619 * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2621 These control the actions of Emacs.
2622 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2623 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2626 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2627 of them, then try again.
2629 * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2631 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2632 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2633 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2635 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2636 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2637 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2638 configure script) that reads:
2639 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2640 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2643 * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2644 directly with an X server.
2646 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2647 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2648 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2649 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2650 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2651 have made the key binding correctly.
2653 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2654 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2655 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2658 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2660 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2661 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2663 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2664 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2665 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2666 modifier bit not otherwise used.
2668 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2669 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2670 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2671 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2673 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2674 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2676 * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2678 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2679 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2680 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2681 value is just ten seconds.
2683 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2685 * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2687 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2688 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2689 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2690 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2692 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2693 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2695 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2696 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2697 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2698 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2700 * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2702 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2703 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2704 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2706 * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2708 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2710 * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2711 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2712 * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2713 * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2715 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2716 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2717 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2718 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2720 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2721 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2723 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2724 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2726 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2728 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2729 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2730 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2731 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2732 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2733 be careful not to lose the others.
2735 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2737 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2739 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2740 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2743 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2745 * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2747 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2749 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2751 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2753 * Self documentation messages are garbled.
2755 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2756 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2757 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2759 * Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2761 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2762 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2764 * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2766 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2768 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2769 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2770 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2771 but tty is giving it back 3.
2773 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2776 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2778 should be changed to:
2780 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2782 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2785 * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2787 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2789 * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2790 * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2792 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2793 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2796 * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2798 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2799 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2800 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2801 with a floating point option other than the default.
2803 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2804 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2805 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2806 floating point option: -fsoft.
2808 * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2810 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2811 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2812 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2814 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2815 whether this problem is present on a given system.
2817 * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2820 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
2821 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2823 * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2825 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2826 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2828 * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2831 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2832 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2833 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2836 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2837 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2838 it only if it is undefined.
2840 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2842 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2843 happen in a non-login shell.
2845 * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2847 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2848 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2849 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2850 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2852 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2853 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2854 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2856 The easy way to do this is to put
2858 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2860 in your site-init.el file.
2862 * Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2864 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2865 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2866 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2867 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2869 * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2871 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2873 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2875 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2876 Here is how to make more of them.
2880 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2882 # creates eight new pty's
2884 * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2886 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2887 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2889 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2890 space available on the machine.
2892 On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2893 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2894 for large blocks (many pages).
2896 * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2897 * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2898 * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2899 * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2901 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2902 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2903 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2905 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2906 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2907 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2908 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2909 when unpacking the shell archive.
2911 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2912 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2913 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2915 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2916 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2918 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2919 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2920 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2921 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2922 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2923 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2924 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2925 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2926 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2927 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2928 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2930 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2932 * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2934 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2935 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2936 space than was allocated.
2938 This could be caused by
2939 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2940 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2941 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2942 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2943 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2944 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2946 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2947 (not from the directory you expected).
2948 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2949 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2950 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2951 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2954 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2955 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2957 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2958 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2961 * Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2963 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2964 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2965 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2966 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2968 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2969 than the corresponding .el file.
2971 * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2973 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2975 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2976 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2977 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2978 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2980 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2981 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2982 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2983 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2984 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2986 * Compilation errors on VMS.
2988 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2989 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2990 This is not an error. Ignore it.
2992 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2993 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2995 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2996 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3001 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3002 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3003 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
3005 * rmail gets error getting new mail
3007 rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
3008 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
3009 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
3011 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
3012 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
3013 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
3014 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
3015 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
3016 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
3017 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
3019 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
3020 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
3021 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
3022 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
3027 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
3028 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
3029 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
3030 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
3036 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
3037 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
3038 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
3039 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
3040 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
3041 directory copy is ineffective.
3043 * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
3045 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
3046 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
3047 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
3048 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
3049 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
3050 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
3051 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
3052 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
3054 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
3056 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
3057 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
3058 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
3060 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
3061 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
3062 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
3063 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
3064 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
3065 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
3067 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
3068 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
3069 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
3070 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
3071 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
3072 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
3073 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
3074 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
3075 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
3077 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
3078 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
3079 codes. You might as well try it.
3081 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
3082 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
3083 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
3084 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
3085 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
3086 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
3087 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
3088 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
3090 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
3091 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
3092 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
3093 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
3094 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
3097 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
3098 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
3099 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
3100 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
3101 other control characters are already used by emacs.
3103 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
3104 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
3107 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
3108 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
3109 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
3110 automatically. Here is an example:
3112 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3114 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
3115 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
3118 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
3119 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
3120 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
3121 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
3122 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
3123 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
3124 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
3125 of inferior systems.
3127 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
3129 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
3130 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
3131 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
3132 that wants to use flow control.
3134 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
3135 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
3136 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
3138 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
3139 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
3140 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
3142 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
3144 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
3145 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
3146 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
3147 control on the local system.
3149 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
3150 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
3151 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
3152 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
3154 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
3155 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
3156 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
3158 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
3159 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
3160 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
3161 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
3163 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3165 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
3168 * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
3170 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
3171 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
3172 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
3174 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
3175 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
3176 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
3177 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
3178 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
3179 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
3180 There are several possibilities:
3182 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
3184 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
3185 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
3187 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
3188 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
3191 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
3192 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
3193 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
3194 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
3195 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
3196 tested on many kinds of terminals.
3198 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
3200 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
3201 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
3202 for certain terminals.
3204 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
3205 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
3207 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
3208 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
3210 * Output from Control-V is slow.
3212 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
3213 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
3214 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
3215 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
3216 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
3217 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
3219 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
3220 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
3221 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
3222 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
3223 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
3224 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
3225 time as the operations really take.
3227 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
3228 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
3229 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
3230 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
3231 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
3232 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
3233 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
3234 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
3235 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
3236 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
3238 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
3239 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
3240 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
3241 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
3242 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
3243 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
3246 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
3247 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3248 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3250 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3251 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3253 * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3255 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3257 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3258 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3260 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3262 * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3264 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3267 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3268 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3269 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3270 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3271 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3274 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3275 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3276 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3277 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3278 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3279 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3281 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3282 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3283 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3284 You can probably access help-command via f1.
3286 * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3287 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3288 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3291 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3292 call in the RFS server.
3294 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3295 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3296 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3297 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3299 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3301 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3302 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3303 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3304 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3305 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3306 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3307 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3309 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3311 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3312 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3313 retrieving revision 1.2
3314 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3315 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3316 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3320 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3322 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3323 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3328 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3330 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3331 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3335 * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3337 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3339 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3340 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3342 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3343 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3344 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3345 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3346 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3347 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3348 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3350 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3351 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3352 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3353 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3354 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3357 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3358 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3363 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3364 causes the problem to go away.
3365 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3366 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3368 * 68000 C compiler problems
3370 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3371 These are some that have been observed.
3373 ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3374 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3375 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3377 ** "cannot reclaim" error.
3379 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3380 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3381 simpler expressions.
3383 ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3385 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3386 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3388 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3393 test ((int *) arg.y);
3396 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3397 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3398 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3400 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3401 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3403 * C compilers lose on returning unions
3405 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3406 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3407 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3409 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3410 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.