tlug: Re: kinput2+canna problem (plus unrelated

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "John" == John Seebach <jseebach@example.com> writes:

    John> Still, even with all of the gnome stuff gone, kinput2 does
    John> some wacky stuff. For example, if it's running, several
    John> programs segfault when I try to start them. Among them
    John> xterm, xemacs (with mule and canna support), and a number of
    John> others. Actually, most everything else. Any ideas as to why
    John> this might be or where I should look?

Well, if you were using the nicer on-the-spot or over-the-spot styles,
XEmacs used to try to give a null window argument for the unused
window to Xlib and Xlib would seppuku.  This is an Xlib bug IMO (still
unfixed, I think), and I wouldn't be surprised if it bit a lot of apps
over the years.  I think mostly they're fixed by now, though.  If
XEmacs is at least version 20.4 (should be), then that bug is fixed.

This is touchy, difficult stuff, unfortunately.  Both the standards
and the implementations were written mostly carelessly[1] and in bad
style.  IMHO.  Core dumps are almost always bugs, and there are far
too many of them needing working around in this part of Xlib.  We can
hope you'll find an easy fix, but....

If you're game ... you can try `gdb xemacs' (or whatever---yes, it's
possibly that bad that you have to haul out the heavy artillery), but
it will probably just tell you you're crapping out in XOpenIM or
XOpenIC; libX11.so probably doesn't have debugging info in it.

What I would do is build kinput2 from the sources with debug-enabled
and put it into debug mode, then watch what it's doing when things
crap out.

It's all great fun, definitely worth it, at least if you can take
vacation from your day job to bone up on X and debug the input
managers ;-)


Footnotes: 
[1]  Ie, so what if other parts of the system might break?

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