Re: Fatal error (11). Emacs/ Linux hosed my very long document.

[Mike Cox]

David Kastrup wrote:

> "wlcna" <wlcna@nospam.com> writes:
> 
>> "Mike Cox" <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> 3d6111f1.0409161437.30ef8b7d@posting.google.com">news:3d6111f1.0409161437.30ef8b7d@posting.google.com...
>>>I recently switched to xemacs as my default word processor so I could
>>> do formatting in TEX for a very long document.  Most recently I've
>> [...]
>>
>> I don't really care about this discussion because I don't like/can't
>> stand emacs (I use vi and vim) and also initially thought the o.p. was a
>> complete liar and troll, but having looked at his other posts and his
>> posting
>> history, I no longer believe this and moreover...  I NOW THINK this guy
>> has
>> a point:  xemacs is a pile of crap if this guy was editing for five hours
>> and it crashed out of nowhere on him.
>>
>> I think xemacs has a problem here because I've NEVER ONCE
>> experienced a crash with vim, whether it be using it from the
>> command line or gui.  Not once, and it's the only editor I've been
>> using for years, and I don't use it in any plain, stripped down
>> versions, but pretty well feature-maxed versions, under multiple
>> operating systems and windowing environments.  This guy was editing
>> for five hours and he gets a crash "out of nowhere."

I'll admit that I don't know too much about emacs.  I was pressing some
random keys in the emacs window and all of a sudden it just collapsed and
core dumped.  And no there was NO autosave file.  And I was using a vanilla
xemacs version that comes standard with SuSE 8.2

> Well, according to "this guy", he had been writing a review, and had
> written 100 pages at the time of the crash.  A 100 page review, and
> written at a speed of 20 pages per hour.

With a lot of screen shots and diagrams that I had already created.

> And then, while he is writing with this fervor, XEmacs crashes, of all
> things, in the package finder.  What is he doing browsing the package
> finder in the middle of such a heated editing session?  And then he
> gets a traceback which indicates no crucial function at all, like what
> would happened if you did a kill -SEGV explicitly on XEmacs.

FOOL.  I don't even know that command.   

> And lo and behold, the autosave file is missing.  It is one of the
> most foolproof systems ever, and it is purportedly not doing anything.
> I have done editing with completely unstable development versions of
> Emacs, and never lost more than about a line of text when it crashed.
> 
<snip>
> 
>> I would think the o.p. might try regular emacs and report his
>> experiences there, since the problem could simply be with the
>> non-standard, separately maintained version he chose to use, xemacs,
>> which may simply be a crash-prone pile of crap compared to regular
>> emacs.
>

There is a GNUS bug in xEMACS AND FSF Emacs.  I'll bet you can even
reproduce it.  Get a dialup connection to the internet.  Start up gnus. 
Read your favorite groups, and if your dailup connection disconnects while
you are downloading an article, GNUS will completely FREEZE UP!!!!  I had
to stop using GNUS because of that reason and am now using knode.  It
happens on xemacs and fsf emacs.  Go try it.  Find the regular 8.2 SuSE CDs
and install and do it.  Emacs will crash on you too if you do the things I
described.


> Nice piece of flame-bait here.  Thankfully, you are not representative
> for the typical vim user.
> 

I have used vim and it too has NEVER crashed on me yet.  Keep it simple.