Hi The issue is with the following code that tries to use the Widget library. The slots of the widget are actually not necessary to see the problem. (widget-create 'integer :help-echo "Enter an integer..." :notify (lambda (w1 &rest ws) (ignore ws) (message "WIFT: IF: %s" (widget-value w1) )) :size 4 ) If you set up a widget buffer, the field will appear as expected with a 0 as initial value. The problem starts if you try to clear the field and then enter a new value, say by hitting C-k, and the problem is in the :value-to-external functions in the in sexp and restricted-sexp widgets (the number, float and natnum widgets must also be fixed). The library :value-to-external functions eventually do a (read value) where value is the widget value; alas, value can be "" if you edit the field in a pretty standard way, as, as I said above, if you had tried to kill the field line (C-k); this causes the traditional minor demons to fly out of the nose, as a 'End of file during parsing' error gets signaled. After that, the buffer with the widgets is pretty much in a random state. Specializing the widget with a hack like the function below fixes the problem, but a good solution may need some more work to get all the corner cases. Note that setting a "widget buffer" in overwrite mode goes a long way to mitigate these problems: maybe having widget-setup switch to it would be another good thing to do. :value-to-external (lambda (widget value) ;; Lifted, and fixed, from `:value-to-external' in ;; `restricted-sexp'. (unless (stringp value) (display-warning 'widget-bad-default-value (format-message "\nA widget of type %S has a bad default value. value: %S match function: %S match-alternatives: %S" (widget-type widget) value (widget-get widget :match) (widget-get widget :match-alternatives)) :warning)) (if (and (stringp value) (string-equal "" value)) ;; Oooops, we cannot just `read'. (widget-get widget :default-value) (read value)) ) Note: this goes back, at least, to 25.x. Thanks for the attention Marco Antoniotti In GNU Emacs 28.2 (build 2, x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2022-09-13 built on AVALON Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 10.0.22621 System Description: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (v10.0.2009.22621.1778) Configured using: 'configure --with-modules --without-dbus --with-native-compilation --without-compress-install CFLAGS=-O2' Configured features: ACL GIF GMP GNUTLS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBXML2 MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY W32NOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS XPM ZLIB (NATIVE_COMP present but libgccjit not available) Important settings: value of $LANG: ENG locale-coding-system: cp1252 Major mode: Fundamental Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t show-paren-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t buffer-read-only: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny dired dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec epa derived gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs text-property-search mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils time-date wombat-theme finder-inf tex-site epg rfc6068 epg-config gnu-elpa-keyring-update slime-autoloads rx info package browse-url url url-proxy url-privacy url-expand url-methods url-history url-cookie url-domsuf url-util mailcap url-handlers url-parse auth-source cl-seq eieio eieio-core cl-macs eieio-loaddefs password-cache json subr-x map url-vars seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv cl-loaddefs cl-lib iso-transl tooltip eldoc paren electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type elisp-mode mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp disp-table term/w32-win w32-win w32-vars term/common-win tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch easymenu timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite emoji-zwj charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray cl-preloaded nadvice button loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp files window text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads w32notify w32 lcms2 multi-tty make-network-process native-compile emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 246351 7879) (symbols 48 14548 1) (strings 32 84982 2407) (string-bytes 1 2218067) (vectors 16 24066) (vector-slots 8 414464 16368) (floats 8 28 222) (intervals 56 377 9) (buffers 992 12)) -- Marco Antoniotti Somewhere over the Rainbow