Re: font-related hanging / general brokenness

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> Updating to the newest CVS Emacs, Emacs goes into an infinite-loop upon
>> startup, with the following .emacs file (X resources are empty):

>> (custom-set-faces
>> ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
>> ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
>> ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
>> ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
>> '(default ((t (:stipple nil :background "black" :foreground "white" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil :underline nil :slant normal :weight normal :height 90 :width normal :family "dejavu sans mono")))))

>> A backtrace shows that it seems to be infinitely recursing in the hairy
>> frame/face dance.

Yes, it turns out the problem is that the dance takes the above face
setting and (because it's applied to the `default' face), sets up the
frame's `font' parameter accordingly.  And that x_set_font then decides
to call Qface_set_after_frame_default which starts the whole process all
over again.

Now, I looked thorugh the history, and this call to
Qface_set_after_frame_default was introduced in 1997 by Richard, but
without any explanation of what it's there for.

I can easily fix the recursion problem (there's already some code for
that purpose in faces.el), but I'm strongly tempted to remove the call
altogether since it's very unclear what it's meant to do and it seems
clear to me that it does a lot more than what it might need to do (this
function will reset *every* face, not just `default').


        Stefan