From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: kj Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: need help with cryptic error message Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:21:24 +0000 (UTC) Organization: none Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1226510694 7681 80.91.229.12 (12 Nov 2008 17:24:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:24:54 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Nov 12 18:25:54 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1L0JTU-00044S-LG for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:25:52 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:56686 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1L0JSM-0002uk-MD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:24:42 -0500 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!panix!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 40 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com Original-X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1226503284 14391 166.84.1.3 (12 Nov 2008 15:21:24 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:21:24 +0000 (UTC) X-No-Confirm: yes User-Agent: nn/6.7.3 Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:164358 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:22:59 -0500 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:59700 Archived-At: I have Emacs 22.1, and I'm trying to turn on whitespace-mode. Nothing I have tried works so far. It would take a very lengthy post for me to describe everything I've tried, so I'll just say that the latest I've done is to put the following in my .emacs file: (autoload 'whitespace-mode "whitespace" "Toggle whitespace visualization." t) ...per the documentation in http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WhiteSpace. When I re-start emacs, visit some file, and try the command M-x whitespace-mode ...I get the error message Autoloading failed to define function whitespace-mode ...which is almost completely useless. How can I get more information on why this defintion failed? (FWIW, emacs won't let me try the command "whitespace" by itself. If I attempt it, Emacs simply adds a hyphen to the "whitespace" I had typed in the minibuffer, and waits for some completion from me, e.g. "mode".) The file whitespace.elc is perfectly accessible in /usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/whitespace.elc. How can I read the documentation (and, in particular, the version number) in this file? Any other words of wisdom would be much appreciated. Thanks! Kynn -- NOTE: In my address everything before the first period is backwards; and the last period, and everything after it, should be discarded.