From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: eric@mantis.styx.org Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Emacs debugging help... Date: 24 Oct 2002 14:01:55 -0400 Organization: AT&T Canada IES Sender: help-gnu-emacs-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035482694 25111 80.91.224.249 (24 Oct 2002 18:04:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 18:04:54 +0000 (UTC) Return-path: Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 184mLh-0006WQ-00 for ; Thu, 24 Oct 2002 20:04:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 184mIR-0004Id-00; Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:01:27 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!tor-nx1.netcom.ca!tor-nn1.netcom.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 63 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.235.5.186 Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@attcanada.ca Original-X-Trace: tor-nn1.netcom.ca 1035482318 216.235.5.186 (Thu, 24 Oct 2002 13:58:38 EDT) Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 13:58:38 EDT Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:106345 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:2895 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help:2895 Hello All, I've recently decided to begin developing and debugging emacs lisp programs. However, I'm not sure how to use the debugger, and, for anything more complicated than a simple function, the documentation I've discovered is less than adequate. The particulars of the current situation are: I'm using VM for reading mail. When my sister sends me email from work, she uses Microsoft Outlook, which writes HTML mail. Now, I know this is wrong, and I've tried to convince her otherwise, but at this point the politics are less interesting to me than the technology. In any case, VM tries to display the HTML email with w3, and w3 fails (somewhere). However, VM is written well, and catches the error, and does something else. I want to figure out what went wrong, that I might fix it. VM reports the failure to *Messages* as Inline HTML display failed: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil) which is generated in a particular function in a (condition-case ...) Now, when I set 'debug-on-error' to t, Emacs doesn't drop into the debugger at the time this error is raised. I guess that's because it doesn't pick this up as an error, (because the error never makes it to the toplevel?) and I have no debugging information; just the (sort of) bad behaviour. Now, if I put a (debug) just before the function call in the VM source code, recompile and reinstall, I get into the (not too well understood by me yet) debugger at around the right time, but then there's still reams of code to step through (manually, with the 'd' key). Clearly, there has to be a better way. What am I missing? What I'm looking for are useful tips, tricks, and general debugging advice, that I might be a more productive and useful member of the community. I have the latest VM and w3 sources, and would like to understand these projects better. I figure that fixing things which bother me is a good way to start. Thanks, Eric ** Eric Moncrieff eric@mantis.styx.org "If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe." --G. K. Chesterton ** GPG Fingerprint: C278 AECC 3292 C26B E9DA 0FD7 EE20 4AA7 E1AD 0D79