bug#3579: 23.0.94; Customize: Cannot see error messages if use standalone minibuffer

bug#3579: 23.0.94; Customize: Cannot see error messages if use standalone minibuffer

[Drew Adams]

Can't give a great recipe for this - you have to set up Emacs to use a
standalone minibuffer (separate frame) only. That's all you need to
do, I believe, to reproduce it.
 
Edit an option value to make it invalid - e.g. edit an integer field
to be 2.5. Then choose Set for Current Session in the State menu.  You
will not see an error message in the minibuffer frame (which is where
the echo area is), or anywhere else. The message does get logged to
*Messages*, but the user gets no feedback at all.
 
Note that mouseover messages appear fine in the echo area.  E.g. turn
off tooltip-mode and put the mouse over the State button. You will see
the text in the echo area. Likewise, other Emacs messages, as produced
by `message' and `error', for instance, appear fine in the echo
area. It is only Customize messages that do not appear anywhere.
 
 
 
In GNU Emacs 23.0.94.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2009-05-24 on SOFT-MJASON
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.4)'
 

bug#3579: 23.0.94; Customize: Cannot see error messages if use standalone minibuffer

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

"Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> Can't give a great recipe for this - you have to set up Emacs to use a
> standalone minibuffer (separate frame) only. That's all you need to
> do, I believe, to reproduce it.
>
> Edit an option value to make it invalid - e.g. edit an integer field
> to be 2.5. Then choose Set for Current Session in the State menu.  You
> will not see an error message in the minibuffer frame (which is where
> the echo area is), or anywhere else. The message does get logged to
> *Messages*, but the user gets no feedback at all.
>
> Note that mouseover messages appear fine in the echo area.  E.g. turn
> off tooltip-mode and put the mouse over the State button. You will see
> the text in the echo area. Likewise, other Emacs messages, as produced
> by `message' and `error', for instance, appear fine in the echo
> area. It is only Customize messages that do not appear anywhere.

This was four years ago.  Are you still seeing this problem?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/

bug#3579: 23.0.94; Customize: Cannot see error messages if use standalone minibuffer

[Drew Adams]

> This was four years ago.  Are you still seeing this problem?

Yes (but see below).

What actually happens (I might not have been aware of this
when I sent the report) is that the error message flashes in the
echo area very briefly, but it is immediately replaced by the
previous echo area contents, which might be a message, such as
`Back to top level' or it might be blank space (perhaps from
a call such as (message nil)?).

IOW, I think the problem is that the error message is transient,
and far too brief.  There is no reason to restore whatever
echo-area contents were there before.

With emacs -Q the error message remains.  It seems there is
something in my setup, besides just useing a standalong
minibuffer, that causes this.  I will try to bisect the code
later to see if I can narrow it down.  You can close this
bug, please.  If I narrow it down and find an Emacs bug I'll
report it.  Thx.