This file describes various problems that have been encountered
in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
-* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
-
-This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
-An example is the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1. To
-circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to
-nil in your .emacs.
-
* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
automatically.)
Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
-Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefile's.
+Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
#else /* debugging enabled */
+
+* Improving performance with slow X connections
+
+If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
+language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by
+configuring Emacs with option `--without-xim'. Configuring Emacs
+without XIM does not affect the use of Emacs' own input methods, which
+are part of the Leim package.
+
+If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
+switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
+
+* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
+
+By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
+FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
+current keymap to a file with the command
+
+ $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
+
+Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
+definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
+key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
+to look like this
+
+ 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
+
+to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
+
+ $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
+
+* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
+
+A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
+into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
+incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
+other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
+been filed.
+
+* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
+
+This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
+2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
+event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
+Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
+
+A workaround for this is to add something like
+
+emacs.waitForWM: false
+
+to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
+frame's parameter list, like this:
+
+ (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
+
+(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
+
+* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
+
+This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
+An example is the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1. To
+circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to
+nil in your .emacs.
+
* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
+Help text that is displayed in a tooltip on other window systems, on
+Windows is printed in the echo area, since tooltips are not yet
+available. Help text for menu items is not displayed at all.
+
There are problems with display if the variable `redisplay-dont-pause'
is set to nil (w32-win.el sets it to t by default, to avoid these
problems). The problems include:
waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
to work around the problem.
+Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
+onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
+you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
+`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
+
+ marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
+
+The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
+
* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
+* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
+
+If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
+due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
+and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
+port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
+are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
+confuses ange-ftp.
+
+The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
+(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
+Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' directory. To
+force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the variable
+`ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the client's
+executable. For example:
+
+ (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
+
+If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
+this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
+
+ (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
+
+
* The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
-fixed in W3's CVS. This patch is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46 work:
+fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
+work.
+
+Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
+If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
+CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
+(require 'w3-e19)
+(provide 'w3-e21)
-
* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
and the default CFLAGS.
+* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
+
+The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
+following message:
+
+ cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
+
+To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
+INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
+functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
+
+ static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
+ {
+ return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
+ }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
+
+Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
+with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
+
+* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
+
+The typical error message might be like this:
+
+ "Cannot open load file: fontset"
+
+This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
+tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
+files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
+Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
+when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
+required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
+its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
+
+Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
+file could fail to load if it is compressed.
+
+The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
+file.
+
* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
+* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
+
+The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
+work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
+was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
+work when an antivirus package is installed.
+
+The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
+mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
+or disable it entirely.
+
* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
seen.
+* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
+
+This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
+Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
+modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
+keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
+modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
+was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
+Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
+
+The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
+modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
+and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
+which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
+the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
+modifier:
+
+ xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
+
+A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
+is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
+
+ xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
+
+This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
+keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
+keys can serve as Meta.
+
+The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
+keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
+
* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
keyboard(5).
EOF
--------------------------------
+* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
+
+This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
+requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
+of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
+which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
+while, Emacs will print a message:
+
+ Timed out waiting for property-notify event
+
+A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
+
* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
-(Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
+
+Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
-and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.)
+and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
+
+Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
+the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
+Lisp.
This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
explains this issue in more detail.
+Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
+MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
+by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
+unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
+them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
+must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
+properly truncated.
+
* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
"Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"