emacs-23.1.90 in terminal does not respond to keyboard input, but works fine as a standalone X11 app.

[Richard Lemieux]

Re: Emacs-23.1.90.1 on Slackware14.

Hi,

When I open Emacs-23.1.90.1 in a base Linux console or in a X11 xterm terminal,
Emacs doen't respond to whatever I type. After Emacs is killed, all the
characters I typed appear in the console/terminal.

I have seen one prior reference to this problem on the net but it did not
provide any clue as to how to solve this issue. It just mentioned a link with Gtk.

This occurs following a system upgrade to Slackware14 64bit. I guess this
problem comes from the new Gtk libraries that come with the update. The version
of Emacs coming with the new Slackware14 works in a terminal but does not work
with SCIM and I can't use Emacs to type Chinese characters this way (I
understand it works with ibus with some setup). SCIM works fine in xterm and
Thunderbird/Firefox.

Emacs-23.1.90.1 has worked well for me for a long time and it used to work both
in terminals and with SCIM on X11, so I compiled Emacs-23.1.90.1 for x86_64 and
it works fine with SCIM under the new Slackware. Unfortunately, but it does not
work at all in a terminal.

So I am looking for a workaround that would allow Emacs-23.1.90.1 to work on a
terminal under the new system. Does someone has some clue as to why
Emacs-23.1.90.1 can't get keyboard input in this new setting?

Thanks

[Richard Lemieux]

The problem was that Emacs (or some X11 library routine) needed some font that
it could not find. At that point Emacs had access to the fonts provided by the
basic X11 install plus the fonts coming with Linux. After I moved all the
fonts from my older Linux partition to the newer one, the problem was gone.
Unfortunately I can't tell which font was missing since I have accumulated too
many fonts over the years.

So even when running Emacs in a 'linux' virtual console, one needs to have some
particular font installed (setting of LANG had no effect if I recall correctly).

Although I know the problem was related to some font, I still can't tell why
this specific choice of font is critical to the operation of Emacs on a dumb
'linux' console.

[William Gardella]

Hi Richard,

Richard Lemieux <jerle...@gmail.com> writes:

> The problem was that Emacs (or some X11 library routine) needed some
> font that it could not find. At that point Emacs had access to the
> fonts provided by the basic X11 install plus the fonts coming with
> Linux. After I moved all the fonts from my older Linux partition to
> the newer one, the problem was gone. Unfortunately I can't tell which
> font was missing since I have accumulated too many fonts over the
> years.
>
> So even when running Emacs in a 'linux' virtual console, one needs to
> have some particular font installed (setting of LANG had no effect if
> I recall correctly).
>
> Although I know the problem was related to some font, I still can't
> tell why this specific choice of font is critical to the operation of
> Emacs on a dumb 'linux' console.

I'd be curious to know if the problem occurs for Emacs built both with
./configure --with-x-toolkit=gtk and without, if Slackware will give you
that option.

-WGG

--
I use grml (http://grml.org/)

[Richard Lemieux]

Hi William,

First, the issue was not really solved by getting additional fonts in
/usr/share/fonts; it just reversed the problem. Before adding the fonts I could
use SCIM when emacs ran in its own window in X11, but X11 wouldn't catch my
typing in a console or on a terminal. After adding the fonts, Emacs would catch
my typing allright in a console (and this is why I sent a SOLVED message to the
list), but later I realized that SCIM would no longer work with Emacs when Emacs
ran in its own window. In fact I was back to the same situation I was when I
used the version of Emacs that came with Slackware14. The version of Emacs I
used in this test (this is not the Slackware14 Emacs) is my old Emacs-23.1.90
configured as follows.

../emacs/configure --prefix=/opt/emacs_cvs --with-x-toolkit=athena
--with-xft --without-dbus --without-gconf

Now, to answer your question, I re-configured as you suggest,

../emacs/configure --prefix=/opt/emacs_cvs --with-x-toolkit=gtk --with-xft
--without-dbus --without-gsettings --without-gconf

The result of using toolkit 'gtk' here is that I still don't have SCIM input
when Emacs is run in its own window, but in addition, Emacs does not even see
what I type when run on a terminal (emacs -nw) or on a console -- whether I am
logged as a user or root.

I have double checked the setup of LANG and LC... variables and those are set as
en_US.UTF-8 in X11 for a user and en_US for root.

So there is something other than the choice of font at play here ...

Richard