--- a/etc/PROBLEMS +++ b/etc/PROBLEMS @@ -26,6 +26,9 @@ ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts. This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be are: + - in the X server resources database, often initialized from + ~/.Xresources (use $ xrdb -query to find out the current state) + - in your ~/.Xdefaults file - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or @@ -35,6 +38,12 @@ ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts. fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find the problematic line(s) and correct them. +After correcting ~/.Xresources, the new data has to be merged into the +X server resources database. Depending on the circumstances, the +following command may do the trick. See xrdb(1) for more information. + + $ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources + ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X. This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was @@ -270,8 +279,7 @@ *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error. This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch -for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3 -corrects that. +for epop3 to fix it, but perhaps a newer version of epop3 corrects that. *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode. @@ -507,7 +515,7 @@ *** Dired is very slow. To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from -invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or +invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Coreutils package; or (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase. *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps. @@ -600,7 +608,7 @@ *** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used. with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any -other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the +other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then starting the application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, @@ -700,7 +708,7 @@ ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font. ** Underlines appear at the wrong position. This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property. -Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk +Examples are the 7x13 font on XFree86 prior to version 4.1, or the jmk neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17. To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your `.emacs'. @@ -823,7 +831,7 @@ *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key. Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display. -*** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang. +*** Using X Window System, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang. Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work. @@ -987,8 +995,8 @@ *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed. Timed out waiting for property-notify event -A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that -comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem. +A workaround is to not use `klipper'. Upgrading `klipper' to the one +coming with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem. *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE. @@ -1113,8 +1121,8 @@ *** Improving performance with slow X connections. (menu-bar-mode -1) (tool-bar-mode -1) - For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults - file: + For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your + .Xresources or .Xdefaults file: Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off Emacs.menuBar: off @@ -1133,7 +1141,7 @@ *** Improving performance with slow X connections. -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems. For more about lbxproxy, see: - http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html + http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.0/doc/lbxproxy.1.html 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file: @@ -1201,17 +1209,17 @@ *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs. -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files. -*** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks. +*** Emacs running under X Window System does not handle mouse clicks. *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'. One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in the environment. -*** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname. +*** X doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname. People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs -not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But +not to work with X if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD. @@ -1393,7 +1401,7 @@ ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely. ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal. This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that -terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing +terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handling the combination of features specified for that terminal. The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters @@ -1612,7 +1620,7 @@ *** GNU/Linux: Truncated svn annotate output with SSH. The symptoms are: you are accessing a svn repository over SSH. You use vc-annotate on a large (several thousand line) file, and the result is truncated around the 1000 line mark. It works fine with -other access methods (eg http), or from outside Emacs. +other access methods (e.g. http), or from outside Emacs. This may be a similar libc/SSH issue to the one mentioned above for CVS. A similar workaround seems to be effective: create a script with the @@ -1714,7 +1722,11 @@ *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block. produce a modified terminfo entry. Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor, -change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command. +set the `visible-cursor' variable to nil in your ~/.emacs: + (setq visible-cursor nil) + +Still other way is to change the "cvvis" capability to send the +"\E[?25h\E[?0c" command. ** FreeBSD @@ -1906,7 +1918,7 @@ *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use Ctrl : "\276" threequarters -that should read: +while it should read: Ctrl : "\276" threequarters @@ -2049,7 +2061,7 @@ ** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded. ** M-x term does not work on MS-Windows. TTY emulation on Windows is undocumented, and programs such as stty -which are used on posix platforms to control tty emulation do not +which are used on POSIX platforms to control tty emulation do not exist for native windows terminals. ** Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter @@ -2062,7 +2074,7 @@ ** Frames are not refreshed while dialogs or menus are displayed This means no redisplay while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu is displayed. This also means tooltips with help text for pop-up -menus is not displayed at all (except in a TTY session, where the help +menus are not displayed at all (except in a TTY session, where the help text is shown in the echo area). This is because message handling under Windows is synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while waiting for a system function, which popped up @@ -2144,7 +2156,7 @@ ** Files larger than 4GB report wrong size in a 32-bit Windows build Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as -well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies +well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls', which relies on `file-attributes'. ** Playing sound doesn't support the :data method @@ -2332,7 +2344,7 @@ *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''. marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted... -The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'. +The solution is to remove this line from `/etc/fstab'. *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture. @@ -2363,7 +2375,7 @@ *** Building the native MS-Windows port fails due to unresolved externals oo-spd/i386/ctags.o:ctags.c:(.text+0x156e): undefined reference to `_imp__re_set_syntax' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status -This happens because GCC finds an incompatible header regex.h +This happens because GCC finds an incompatible regex.h header somewhere on the include path, before the version of regex.h supplied with Emacs. One such incompatible version of regex.h is part of the GnuWin32 Regex package. @@ -2510,7 +2522,7 @@ *** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1 "No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'". The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked. -See . +See , . ** Dumping @@ -2618,7 +2630,7 @@ *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data. On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined as a macro. If the definition (in both unex*.c and malloc.c) is wrong, it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct -value in the man page for a.out (5). +value in the man page for a.out(5). * Problems on legacy systems