Mercurial > emacs
comparison =PROBLEMS @ 1858:794bd24d1415
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author | Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com> |
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date | Sun, 14 Feb 1993 14:13:56 +0000 |
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children | a81c98f793b6 |
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1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered | |
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. | |
3 | |
4 * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X. | |
5 | |
6 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves | |
7 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be | |
8 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using. | |
9 | |
10 * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined. | |
11 | |
12 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS. | |
13 | |
14 * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though | |
15 the names work properly with other programs on the same system. | |
16 | |
17 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared | |
18 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the | |
19 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a | |
20 similiar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses. | |
21 | |
22 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with | |
23 the nameserver, but Emacs does not. | |
24 | |
25 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you | |
26 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs. | |
27 | |
28 * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld: | |
29 | |
30 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment | |
31 | |
32 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld. | |
33 | |
34 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun. | |
35 | |
36 * Self documentation messages are garbled. | |
37 | |
38 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond | |
39 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the | |
40 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem. | |
41 | |
42 * M-x shell immediately responds "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1". | |
43 | |
44 This is often due to inability to run the program `env'. | |
45 This should be in the `etc' subdirectory of the directory | |
46 where Emacs is installed, and it should be marked executable. | |
47 | |
48 * Trouble using ptys on AIX. | |
49 | |
50 People often instll the pty devices on AIX incorrectly. | |
51 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly. | |
52 | |
53 * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous". | |
54 | |
55 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says: | |
56 | |
57 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to | |
58 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then | |
59 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places, | |
60 but tty is giving it back 3. | |
61 | |
62 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single | |
63 word: | |
64 | |
65 if (`tty` == "/dev/console") | |
66 | |
67 should be changed to: | |
68 | |
69 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console") | |
70 | |
71 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc | |
72 and into .login. | |
73 | |
74 * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang. | |
75 | |
76 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work. | |
77 | |
78 * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks. | |
79 * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'. | |
80 | |
81 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in | |
82 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in | |
83 the environment. | |
84 | |
85 * Emacs starts in a directory other than the one that is current in the shell. | |
86 | |
87 If the PWD environment variable exists, Emacs uses this variable as | |
88 the initial working directory. | |
89 | |
90 Some shells automatically update this variable, while other shells fail | |
91 to do so. If you use two such shells in combination, the variable can | |
92 end up wrong. This confuses Emacs. | |
93 | |
94 The solution is to put something in the start-up file for the shell | |
95 that does not update PWD, to get rid of that environment variable. | |
96 For example, in csh, use `unsetenv PWD'. | |
97 | |
98 * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun. | |
99 | |
100 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or | |
101 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates | |
102 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries, | |
103 with a floating point option other than the default. | |
104 | |
105 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in | |
106 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o. | |
107 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default | |
108 floating point option: to decide at run time what hardware is | |
109 available. | |
110 | |
111 * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server. | |
112 | |
113 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd | |
114 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to | |
115 tell Emacs to compensate for this. | |
116 | |
117 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself | |
118 whether this problem is present on a given system. | |
119 | |
120 * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver | |
121 as a concentrator. | |
122 | |
123 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use | |
124 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters. | |
125 | |
126 * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1". | |
127 | |
128 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos | |
129 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine. | |
130 | |
131 * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs' | |
132 terminal type. | |
133 | |
134 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP | |
135 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to | |
136 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs | |
137 emulates. | |
138 | |
139 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP | |
140 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets | |
141 it only if it is undefined. | |
142 | |
143 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file | |
144 | |
145 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not | |
146 happen in a non-login shell. | |
147 | |
148 * Error compiling sysdep.c, "sioctl.h: no such file or directory". | |
149 | |
150 Among USG systems with TIOCGWINSZ, some require sysdep.c to include | |
151 the file sioctl.h; on others, sioctl.h does not exist. We don't know | |
152 how to distinguish these two kind of systems, so currently we try to | |
153 include sioctl.h on all of them. If this #include gets an error, just | |
154 delete it. | |
155 | |
156 * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname. | |
157 | |
158 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs | |
159 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But | |
160 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think | |
161 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD. | |
162 | |
163 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil). | |
164 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that | |
165 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g. | |
166 | |
167 The easy way to do this is to put | |
168 | |
169 (setq x-sigio-bug t) | |
170 | |
171 in your site-init.el file. | |
172 | |
173 * Problem with remote X server on Suns. | |
174 | |
175 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another | |
176 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This | |
177 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup. | |
178 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized. | |
179 | |
180 * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars | |
181 | |
182 These control the actions of Emacs. | |
183 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file. | |
184 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function | |
185 "load" will search. | |
186 | |
187 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid | |
188 of them, then try again. | |
189 | |
190 * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain | |
191 | |
192 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message: | |
193 | |
194 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell... | |
195 | |
196 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system. | |
197 Here is how to make more of them. | |
198 | |
199 % cd /dev | |
200 % ls pty* | |
201 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7) | |
202 % /etc/crpty 8 | |
203 # creates eight new pty's | |
204 | |
205 * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump | |
206 | |
207 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the | |
208 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS. | |
209 | |
210 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping | |
211 space available on the machine. | |
212 | |
213 On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the | |
214 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even | |
215 for large blocks (many pages). | |
216 | |
217 * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered | |
218 * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127" | |
219 * or, temacs runs and dumps xemacs, but xemacs totally fails to work. | |
220 * or, temacs gets errors dumping xemacs | |
221 | |
222 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be | |
223 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are | |
224 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values. | |
225 | |
226 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs. | |
227 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in | |
228 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar' | |
229 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters | |
230 when unpacking the shell archive. | |
231 | |
232 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know | |
233 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network | |
234 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit. | |
235 | |
236 The only verified ways to transfer GNU Emacs are `tar', kermit (in | |
237 binary mode on Unix), and rcp or internet ftp between two Unix systems, | |
238 or chaosnet cftp using raw mode. | |
239 | |
240 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its | |
241 nonprinting characters, you can fix them: | |
242 | |
243 1) Record the names of all the .elc files. | |
244 2) Delete all the .elc files. | |
245 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large. | |
246 You might as well save the old alloc.o. | |
247 4) Remake xemacs. It should work now. | |
248 5) Running xemacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly | |
249 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist. | |
250 You may need to increase the value of the variable | |
251 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted | |
252 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report. | |
253 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any) | |
254 and remake temacs. | |
255 7) Remake xemacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files. | |
256 | |
257 * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted" | |
258 | |
259 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el | |
260 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more | |
261 space than was allocated. | |
262 | |
263 This could be caused by | |
264 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files | |
265 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el | |
266 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files. | |
267 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard; | |
268 if you have received Emacs from some other site | |
269 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider | |
270 deleting that file. | |
271 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files | |
272 (not from the directory you expected). | |
273 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist. | |
274 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be | |
275 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose. | |
276 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates | |
277 the space required. | |
278 | |
279 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition | |
280 of PURESIZE in puresize.h. | |
281 | |
282 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence | |
283 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real | |
284 problem. | |
285 | |
286 * Changes made to .el files do not take effect. | |
287 | |
288 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files. | |
289 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes | |
290 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory | |
291 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files. | |
292 | |
293 * The dumped Emacs (xemacs) crashes when run, trying to write pure data. | |
294 | |
295 Two causes have been seen for such problems. | |
296 | |
297 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined | |
298 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong, | |
299 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct | |
300 value in the man page for a.out (5). | |
301 | |
302 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the | |
303 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most | |
304 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and | |
305 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you | |
306 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file. | |
307 | |
308 * Compilation errors on VMS. | |
309 | |
310 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are | |
311 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters. | |
312 This is not an error. Ignore it. | |
313 | |
314 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct | |
315 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten. | |
316 | |
317 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters | |
318 in conditional expressions. The bug is: | |
319 char c = -1, d = 1; | |
320 int i; | |
321 | |
322 i = d ? c : d; | |
323 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the | |
324 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such | |
325 constructs in Emacs have been fixed. | |
326 | |
327 * rmail gets error getting new mail | |
328 | |
329 rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program | |
330 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using | |
331 the protocol defined by /bin/mail. | |
332 | |
333 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses | |
334 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file; | |
335 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do | |
336 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining, | |
337 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes. | |
338 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR | |
339 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL! | |
340 | |
341 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions | |
342 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail, | |
343 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as | |
344 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root): | |
345 | |
346 chgrp mail movemail | |
347 chmod 2755 movemail | |
348 | |
349 * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0. | |
350 * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp. | |
351 | |
352 Some people have found that Emacs was unable to connect to the local | |
353 host by name, as in DISPLAY=prep:0 if you are running on prep, but | |
354 could handle DISPLAY=unix:0. Here is what tale@rpi.edu said: | |
355 | |
356 Seems as | |
357 though gethostbyname was bombing somewhere along the way. Well, we | |
358 had just upgrade from SunOS 3.5 (which X11 was built under) to SunOS | |
359 4.0.1. Any new X applications which tried to be built with the pre | |
360 OS-upgrade libraries had the same problems which Emacs was having. | |
361 Missing /etc/resolv.conf for a little while (when one of the libraries | |
362 was built?) also might have had a hand in it. | |
363 | |
364 The result of all of this (with some speculation) was that we rebuilt | |
365 X and then rebuilt Emacs with the new libraries. Works as it should | |
366 now. Hoorah. | |
367 | |
368 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a, | |
369 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to | |
370 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE | |
371 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro | |
372 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries, | |
373 be careful not to lose the others. | |
374 | |
375 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h: | |
376 | |
377 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv | |
378 | |
379 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that | |
380 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h | |
381 again to say this: | |
382 | |
383 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar | |
384 | |
385 * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen. | |
386 | |
387 This means that Control-S/Control-Q "flow control" is being used. | |
388 C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes away | |
389 C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long streams | |
390 of text without user commands, there is no need for a user-issuable | |
391 "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a properly designed | |
392 flow control mechanism would transmit all possible input characters | |
393 without interference. Designing such a mechanism is easy, for a person | |
394 with at least half a brain. | |
395 | |
396 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place: | |
397 | |
398 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control | |
399 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use | |
400 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible | |
401 | |
402 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls | |
403 whether they generate flow control characters. This must be | |
404 set to "no flow control" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes | |
405 there is an escape sequence that the computer can send to turn | |
406 flow control off and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string | |
407 should turn flow control off, and the `te' string should turn it on. | |
408 | |
409 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it | |
410 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled | |
411 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud | |
412 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print | |
413 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if | |
414 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If | |
415 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a | |
416 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard | |
417 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type. | |
418 | |
419 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just | |
420 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control | |
421 codes. You might as well try it. | |
422 | |
423 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer | |
424 through a concentrator which sends flow control to the computer, or it | |
425 insists on sending flow control itself no matter how much padding you | |
426 give it. You are screwed! You should replace the terminal or | |
427 concentrator with a properly designed one. In the mean time, | |
428 some drastic measures can make Emacs semi-work. | |
429 | |
430 One drastic measure to ignore C-s and C-q, while sending enough | |
431 padding that the terminal will not really lose any output. | |
432 Ignoring C-s and C-q can be done by using keyboard-translate-table | |
433 to map them into an undefined character such as C-^ or C-\. Sending | |
434 lots of padding is done by changing the termcap entry. Here is how | |
435 to make such a keyboard-translate-table: | |
436 | |
437 (let ((the-table (make-string 128 0))) | |
438 ;; Default is to translate each character into itself. | |
439 (let ((i 0)) | |
440 (while (< i 128) | |
441 (aset the-table i i) | |
442 (setq i (1+ i)))) | |
443 ;; Swap C-s with C-\ | |
444 (aset the-table ?\C-\\ ?\C-s) | |
445 (aset the-table ?\C-s ?\C-\\) | |
446 ;; Swap C-q with C-^ | |
447 (aset the-table ?\C-^ ?\C-q) | |
448 (aset the-table ?\C-q ?\C-^) | |
449 (setq keyboard-translate-table the-table)) | |
450 | |
451 An even more drastic measure is to make Emacs use flow control. | |
452 To do this, evaluate the Lisp expression (set-input-mode nil t). | |
453 Emacs will then interpret C-s and C-q as flow control commands. (More | |
454 precisely, it will allow the kernel to do so as it usually does.) You | |
455 will lose the ability to use them for Emacs commands. Also, as a | |
456 consequence of using CBREAK mode, the terminal's Meta-key, if any, | |
457 will not work, and C-g will be liable to cause a loss of output which | |
458 will produce garbage on the screen. (These problems apply to 4.2BSD; | |
459 they may not happen in 4.3 or VMS, and I don't know what would happen | |
460 in sysV.) You can use keyboard-translate-table, as shown above, | |
461 to map two other input characters (such as C-^ and C-\) into C-s and | |
462 C-q, so that you can still search and quote. | |
463 | |
464 I have no intention of ever redisigning the Emacs command set for | |
465 the assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. This | |
466 flow control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need | |
467 it are bad merchandise and should not be purchased. If you can | |
468 get some use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, I am glad, | |
469 but I will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems | |
470 for the sake of inferior systems. | |
471 | |
472 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely. | |
473 | |
474 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow | |
475 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your | |
476 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator | |
477 that wants to use flow control. | |
478 | |
479 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control. | |
480 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without | |
481 flow control, as described in the preceding section. | |
482 | |
483 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters | |
484 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above | |
485 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\. | |
486 | |
487 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection. | |
488 | |
489 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow | |
490 control characters to the remote system to which they connect. | |
491 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow | |
492 control on the local system. | |
493 | |
494 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host | |
495 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the | |
496 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems, | |
497 "stty start u stop u" will do this. | |
498 | |
499 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way | |
500 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and | |
501 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell. | |
502 | |
503 * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal. | |
504 | |
505 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that | |
506 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing | |
507 the combination of features specified for that terminal. | |
508 | |
509 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters | |
510 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression | |
511 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all | |
512 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do | |
513 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file | |
514 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal. | |
515 There are several possibilities: | |
516 | |
517 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual. | |
518 | |
519 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you | |
520 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong. | |
521 | |
522 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect | |
523 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way | |
524 by termcap. | |
525 | |
526 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for | |
527 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior | |
528 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are | |
529 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for | |
530 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be | |
531 tested on many kinds of terminals. | |
532 | |
533 3) The termcap entry is wrong. | |
534 | |
535 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes | |
536 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries | |
537 for certain terminals. | |
538 | |
539 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be | |
540 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using. | |
541 | |
542 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed | |
543 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c. | |
544 | |
545 * Output from Control-V is slow. | |
546 | |
547 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow. | |
548 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails | |
549 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen | |
550 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after | |
551 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast, | |
552 it will scroll them to the top of the screen. | |
553 | |
554 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is | |
555 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not | |
556 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs | |
557 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to | |
558 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must | |
559 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much | |
560 time as the operations really take. | |
561 | |
562 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters | |
563 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the | |
564 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals | |
565 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of | |
566 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow | |
567 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want | |
568 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will | |
569 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do | |
570 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling | |
571 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal. | |
572 | |
573 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting | |
574 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the | |
575 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have | |
576 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should | |
577 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines | |
578 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap | |
579 `cm' string. | |
580 | |
581 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal | |
582 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These | |
583 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument. | |
584 | |
585 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount | |
586 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled. | |
587 | |
588 * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm. | |
589 | |
590 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines: | |
591 | |
592 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f) | |
593 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^? | |
594 | |
595 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127). | |
596 | |
597 * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters. | |
598 | |
599 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear | |
600 after a day or two. | |
601 | |
602 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by | |
603 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another | |
604 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion | |
605 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to | |
606 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming | |
607 to it. | |
608 | |
609 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use, | |
610 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand | |
611 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well; | |
612 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think | |
613 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more | |
614 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'. | |
615 | |
616 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion, | |
617 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file: | |
618 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char) | |
619 You may then wish to put the function help-command on some | |
620 other key. I leave to you the task of deciding which key. | |
621 | |
622 * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings. | |
623 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem, | |
624 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that | |
625 causes it. | |
626 | |
627 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system | |
628 call in the RFS server. | |
629 | |
630 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the | |
631 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very | |
632 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files | |
633 to make sure that the bits are on the disk. | |
634 | |
635 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server. | |
636 | |
637 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a | |
638 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that | |
639 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is | |
640 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it | |
641 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync | |
642 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS | |
643 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem. | |
644 | |
645 (as always, your line numbers may vary) | |
646 | |
647 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
648 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v | |
649 retrieving revision 1.2 | |
650 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
651 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987 | |
652 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987 | |
653 *************** | |
654 *** 163,169 **** | |
655 /* | |
656 * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
657 */ | |
658 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync) | |
659 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); | |
660 else | |
661 { | |
662 --- 166,172 ---- | |
663 /* | |
664 * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
665 */ | |
666 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close) | |
667 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); | |
668 else | |
669 { | |
670 | |
671 * ld complains because `alloca' is not defined on your system. | |
672 | |
673 Alloca is a library function in 4.2bsd, which is used very heavily by | |
674 GNU Emacs. Use of malloc instead is very difficult, as you would have | |
675 to arrange for the storage to be freed, and do so even in the case of | |
676 a longjmp happening inside a subroutine. Many subroutines in Emacs | |
677 can do longjmp. | |
678 | |
679 If your system does not support alloca, try defining the symbol | |
680 C_ALLOCA in the m-...h file for that machine. This will enable the use | |
681 in Emacs of a portable simulation for alloca. But you will find that | |
682 Emacs's performance and memory use improve if you write a true | |
683 alloca in assembler language. | |
684 | |
685 alloca (N) should return the address of an N-byte block of memory | |
686 added dynamically to the current stack frame. | |
687 | |
688 * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs. | |
689 | |
690 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs: | |
691 | |
692 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG | |
693 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom | |
694 | |
695 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C. | |
696 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct | |
697 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending | |
698 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes | |
699 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled | |
700 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files | |
701 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine. | |
702 | |
703 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect | |
704 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more | |
705 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it | |
706 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an | |
707 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call: | |
708 Lisp_Object *args; | |
709 ... | |
710 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)... | |
711 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in | |
712 Lisp_Object *args; | |
713 Lisp_Object tem; | |
714 ... | |
715 tem = args[i]; | |
716 ... foo (r, tem, ...)... | |
717 causes the problem to go away. | |
718 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects, | |
719 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that. | |
720 | |
721 * 68000 C compiler problems | |
722 | |
723 Various 68000 compilers have different problems. | |
724 These are some that have been observed. | |
725 | |
726 ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses. | |
727 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work | |
728 if x is of type Lisp_Object. | |
729 | |
730 ** "cannot reclaim" error. | |
731 | |
732 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct | |
733 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with | |
734 simpler expressions. | |
735 | |
736 ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code. | |
737 | |
738 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause. | |
739 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code: | |
740 | |
741 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; }; | |
742 | |
743 lose (arg) | |
744 struct foo arg; | |
745 { | |
746 test ((int *) arg.y); | |
747 } | |
748 | |
749 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem. | |
750 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with | |
751 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int. | |
752 | |
753 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type | |
754 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now. | |
755 | |
756 * C compilers lose on returning unions | |
757 | |
758 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning | |
759 a union type. Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return | |
760 type Lisp_Object, which is currently defined as a union. | |
761 | |
762 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type | |
763 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now. | |
764 |