Hi Drew,

On Dec 26, 2009, at 7:57 AM, Drew Adams wrote:

>> This problem "went away" without any apparent intervention from me.
>> Looking at the cocoAspell web site again, perhaps this was
>> the culprit:
>>
>>> In some rare case the first time you spell check a
>>> document, cocoAspell may fail to come up with a list
>>> of suggestions. It happens because the spell server
>>> needs some time to load the dictionary and initialize
>>> itself. The client application simply times out on the
>>> spell checking request and behaves as there were no
>>> suggestions. This may not happen at all if you have a
>>> fast machine.
>>
>> Apologies for the noise level.
>
> My guess is that the text you quoted is irrelevant here.
>
> A wrong-type arg error is a product bug, even if it is often only a  
> minor
> problem. Please try to reproduce it, starting with `emacs -Q', and  
> then report
> it using `M-x report-emacs-bug'.
>
> Often, such a bug occurs because of a lack of proper initialization  
> of something
> (typically a variable that is supposed to be a string is nil by  
> default).
>
> The same code that raises the error often performs initialization,  
> so after the
> error has been raised once, initialization has occurred and the  
> error is never
> raised again. That can explain why it "went away without any apparent
> intervention from you." There is nevertheless a bug.

I appreciate your perspective here and admire the combination of  
skills, knowledge, and intellect that would guide someone to reproduce  
the state of such a complex system.  That combination doesn't describe  
me, however, and I'm not able to reproduce the error message starting  
with emacs-Q (though I was pleased to find that I could do enough to  
raise two other errors that were familiar to me through my  
configuration trials).  I wish I was able to do more.

In response to your final paragraph, I did observe the error  
repeatedly as I tried the various menu items that launch a spell  
check: the various options under Edit/Spell and the AucTeX one under  
Command/Spell.  I don't know if this observation bears directly on the  
problem, but it came to mind when I read your last paragraph, and I am  
passing it along in the hope that it might prove interesting to you.

All the best,
Tom