I see a certain wrong behavior with emacs involving fonts and unicode
(devanagari).

I have a small elisp function that generates devanagari in a new buffer.
When the unicode is generated, the display is wrong.
If the badly displaying buffer is saved, emacs is exited and restarted, it
is displayed correct.

The problem could be with the (adobe) font. However there is also some
issue with the display in emacs which is perhaps not correct.

To make it happen the following are needed:
.Xresources containing the 1 line:
emacs*font: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso10646-1

Of course the font should be installed.

A text file called roman.txt with the two lines (for translating to
devanagari)
-----------------
saMprApte
DukRRiMkaraNe
----------------

The following elisp in a file say apply-input-method.el
Now call emacs as
emacs -q -l apply-input-method.el roman.txt
(-Q does not work)
And then call F4 ie rpm-apply-input-method.

A new frame should open with two lines of devanagari with the newline
between the two lines *looking* as though it is 1 page wide,
though it is only 1 newline.

In short the newline displays as though it were some 20 or so lines.

The elisp file: apply-input-method.el
----------------------
(setq rpm-input-method "devanagari-itrans")

(defun rpm-apply-input-method ()
  "buffer to buffer apply input method with buffering windowing stuff mixed
up"
  (interactive)
  (let* ((inp (buffer-substring-no-properties (point-min) (point-max)))
     (filename (file-name-nondirectory (buffer-file-name)))
     (outname (concat (file-name-sans-extension filename)
                   "-hi"
                   (file-name-extension filename t)))
     (p))
    (switch-to-buffer-other-frame outname)
    (save-excursion
      (save-window-excursion
    (setq buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)
    (set-input-method rpm-input-method t)
    (setq p (point))
    (erase-buffer)
    (execute-kbd-macro inp)))
    (goto-char p)
    (other-frame 1)))

(global-set-key [f4] 'rpm-apply-input-method)

If Emacs crashed, and you have the Emacs process in the gdb debugger,
please include the output from the following gdb commands:
    `bt full' and `xbacktrace'.
For information about debugging Emacs, please read the file
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/etc/DEBUG.

In GNU Emacs 23.4.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.10)
 of 2012-04-08 on biber, modified by Debian
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11201902
configured using `configure  '--build' 'i486-linux-gnu' '--build'
'i486-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib'
'--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var/lib'
'--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes'
'--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs23:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.4 /site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.4/site-lisp :/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp'
'--with-crt-dir=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu' '--with-x=yes'
'--with-x-toolkit=gtk' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars'
'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-g -O2 -fstack-protector
--param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Wformat-security
-Werror=format-security -Wall -DDEBIAN -O2' 'CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Text

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
<f4> <switch-frame> <switch-frame> <help-echo> <help-echo>
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <switch-frame>
<down-mouse-4> <mouse-4> <double-down-mouse-4> <double-mouse-4>
<triple-down-mouse-4> <triple-mouse-4> <down-mouse-5>
<mouse-5> <double-down-mouse-5> <double-mouse-5> <triple-down-mouse-5>
<triple-mouse-5> <down-mouse-4> <mouse-4> <double-down-mouse-4>
<double-mouse-4> <triple-down-mouse-4> <triple-mouse-4>
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo>
<help-echo> M-x r e p o r t - e m <tab> <return>

Recent messages:
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50global.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50ledger.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50lilypond-data.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50psvn.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50pydb.el (source)...done
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
Loading quail/indian...done
byte-code: Beginning of buffer [3 times]
byte-code: End of buffer [3 times]
byte-code: Beginning of buffer [2 times]
byte-code: Beginning of buffer

Load-path shadows:
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/site-lisp/cscope/xcscope hides
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/xcscope
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/site-lisp/cdargs hides
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/cdargs
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/site-lisp/cmake-data/cmake-mode hides
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/cmake-mode
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/tree-widget hides
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/lisp/tree-widget
/usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell hides
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/lisp/textmodes/flyspell
/usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell hides
/usr/share/emacs/23.4/lisp/textmodes/ispell

Features:
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password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse rfc2231
rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util netrc
time-date mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils wid-edit mailheader canlock sha1
hex-util hashcash mail-utils emacsbug cus-start cus-load ind-util
regexp-opt quail help-mode easymenu view tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks
lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd font-setting tool-bar dnd fontset
image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select
scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core
frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai
tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european
ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help
simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces cus-face files
text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom
widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process dbusbind
system-font-setting font-render-setting gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)