5:42 a.m.
Please reply to the mailing list, not to individuals. XEmacs is a
_team_, and the individual who responds first is often not the person
best suited to continue the thread.
Also, please don't use HTML-only mail. It's only because I'm a
perfectionist that it doesn't go straight to the bit-bucket; in the
XEmacs context, we get literally thousands of spams a week in that
format, and maybe one or two legit posts a month. You will experience
delays and dropouts if you post in that format.
Matthew> Thanks. I can't believe I forgot to add in my previous
Matthew> email: I am running Cygwin. Cygwin uses lesstif in place
Matthew> of(?) Motif (but I think you know this).
Yes, it's detected by configure and noted in Installation.
Matthew> Cygcheck shows: "lesstif
Matthew> 0.93.94-2." Presumably this is later than the 0.93.36 you
Matthew> mention below. So how might I verify whether the patch
Matthew> you also mention was included in 94-2?
Ask the Lesstif people or the Cygwin people. The patch from PROBLEMS
simply rips out the finalization, equivalent to cutting off your
finger to remove a splinter; I would assume that an actual fix would
involve a lot more work.
Matthew> Please clarify what you mean by "your OS's section". Section
of what?
The PROBLEMS file that is distributed with XEmacs. I'm not sure
whether Cygwin installs it, it's part of the source distribution.
Some of that information may be in the FAQ (see the Help menu, XEmacs
FAQ option, or the links to documentation on http://www.xemacs.org/),
however the FAQ is organized differently from PROBLEMS.
--
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
ask what your business can "do for" free software.
8:14 p.m.
New subject: Crashes running emacs or xemacs: segmentation fault
Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Please reply to the mailing list, not to individuals. XEmacs is a
_team_, and the individual who responds first is often not the person
best suited to continue the thread.
May I suggest then, that in your replies, you set the Reply-To: header
to point to the list, not to yourself? I would also like to point out
that in the text that said to reply
to such-and-such address, there was no mention of this address being an
alias for a mailing list. Perhaps that too should be added.
Also, please don't use HTML-only mail. It's only because
I'm a
perfectionist that it doesn't go straight to the bit-bucket; in the
XEmacs context, we get literally thousands of spams a week in that
format, and maybe one or two legit posts a month. You will experience
delays and dropouts if you post in that format.
Then I guess I have been lucky so far. I consider your response time
very good.
Matthew> Thanks. I can't believe I forgot to add in my
previous
Matthew> email: I am running Cygwin. Cygwin uses lesstif in place
Matthew> of(?) Motif (but I think you know this).
Yes, it's detected by configure and noted in Installation.
Matthew> Cygcheck shows: "lesstif
Matthew> 0.93.94-2." Presumably this is later than the 0.93.36 you
Matthew> mention below. So how might I verify whether the patch
Matthew> you also mention was included in 94-2?
Ask the Lesstif people or the Cygwin people. The patch from PROBLEMS
simply rips out the finalization, equivalent to cutting off your
finger to remove a splinter; I would assume that an actual fix would
involve a lot more work.
Matthew> Please clarify what you mean by "your OS's section". Section
of what?
The PROBLEMS file that is distributed with XEmacs. I'm not sure
whether Cygwin installs it, it's part of the source distribution.
If it is only part of the source distribution, then I wouldn't have it.
I installed only the binaries. So I have some README files, man pages,
and info files. But that is all.
Some of that information may be in the FAQ (see the Help menu, XEmacs
FAQ option, or the links to documentation on http://www.xemacs.org/),
however the FAQ is organized differently from PROBLEMS.
No doubt. But I notice that Q.2.0.6 of the FAQ also simply states
without qualification that the PROBLEMS file "comes with XEmacs" without
warning that it is only in the source distribution.
And the only time 'segmentation fault' shows up (in a search at
http://www.xemacs.org/) is when '__malloc_hook' can't be resolved.
Oh, but wait: there is one exception: the section on "Common Lisp
Extensions (7. Declarations)" claims that "For example, barring serious
bugs in Emacs itself, Emacs will not crash with a segmentation fault
just because of an error in a fully-optimized Lisp program."
So if, as you say, this error message is really being caused by Motif
(more accurately, Lesstif) bugs, then that section of the FAQ needs to
be corrected.
1:26 a.m.
New subject: Crashes running emacs or xemacs: segmentation fault
>>>> "Matthew" == Matthew Johnson
<mjohnson(a)lightsurf.com> writes:
Matthew> May I suggest then, that in your replies, you set the
Matthew> Reply-To: header to point to the list, not to yourself?
If the reply-to header was set, please send me the mail headers so I
can see just what went wrong, and I'll fix the problem. I doubt it
was set, however; I think you probably just hit reply-to-sender. This
is a culture clash; I realize that very few Windows MUAs have
reply-to-list, and Windows users expect lists to set Reply-To.
However, we don't set Reply-To on our mailing lists; that is known to
cause problems in general, and would definitely cause problems for the
great majority of our list members, who do use RFC conforming MUAs and
do have frequent need to direct mail to individuals rather than back
to the list.
Matthew> I would also like to point out that in the text that said
Matthew> to reply to such-and-such address,
What text? In the post I sent? There's no reference to any address
in the body that I can find. In the crash error message? Yes,
crashes(a)xemacs.org is not very explicit, but it's clearly not a
personal name. In any case the post that you replied to was sent to
xemacs-beta, and that appears in the headers.
Matthew> Then I guess I have been lucky so far. I consider your
Matthew> response time very good.
You were lucky. I've been diligent lately. However, at the beginning of
February the spam buckets went two weeks without being checked.
> Some of that information may be in the FAQ (see the Help menu,
> XEmacs FAQ option, or the links to documentation on
> http://www.xemacs.org/), however the FAQ is organized
> differently from PROBLEMS.
Matthew> No doubt. But I notice that Q.2.0.6 of the FAQ also
Matthew> simply states without qualification that the PROBLEMS
Matthew> file "comes with XEmacs" without warning that it is only
Matthew> in the source distribution.
We'll fix the FAQ, then.
FYI, strictly speaking, we only try to support the source
distribution; 3rd party binaries (eg from Cywin and Linux distros) are
not our problem. Even the Windows binaries _we_ supply are a
3rd-party effort in some sense. There's no organizational commitment
to providing them. They are provided by one of the developers who
believes that Windows users by and large would not build XEmacs.
(N.B. He hasn't provided a binary for the last two versions.).
Matthew> And the only time 'segmentation fault' shows up (in a
Matthew> search at http://www.xemacs.org/) is when '__malloc_hook'
Matthew> can't be resolved.
Either the user already understands what "segmentation fault" means
and is capable of using the debugger to generate a back trace, or it's
all magic anyway, and they should just report the event as accurately
as they can. It's not the job of our documentation to give a course
in computer architecture and operation. This is not fixable in a
practical sense.
Matthew> So if, as you say, this error message is really being
Matthew> caused by Motif (more accurately, Lesstif) bugs, then
Matthew> that section of the FAQ needs to be corrected.
You've got to be kidding. Doesn't that go without saying, both
because what crashed is not a Lisp program, and especiall
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