Re: Emacs Windows NT crashes when loading/evaluating term/w32-win

[Jason Rumney]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:

> > > > BTW: w32-win doesn't get preloaded when starting GNU Emacs on Windows
> > > > NT
> > > 
> > > Really?
> > 
> > No. The crash is caused by loading w32-win.el a second time. I don't
> > remember the exact details, but I think it involved the face cache
> > being cleared by a function that was called from there.
> 
> Sorry, I'm not following: are you saying that stock Emacs 21.1
> compiled for Windows _always_ fails in this manner?  If so, how come
> my copy works?

It always fails for me. But due to the nature of the bug, it is
plausible that it might not crash sometimes, depending on timing of
redisplay.

The problem was that `x-open-connection' re-initialized the display
causing the default font to momentarily become NULL. If particular
Window messages were received during that brief instant, the font
structure was referenced while it was invalid.

> If it only fails sometimes, there should be some specific cause for
> that.  Perhaps if Christoph knew what that cause might be, he could
> work around it in the meantime, so as to be able to use NTEmacs until
> the fixed version is released.

The workaround is to not explicitly load w32-win. The only time it
should be loaded is at startup, before the first frame appears.
I can assure Christoph that w32-win WAS loaded already, otherwise
Emacs would just not work at all. The problem with the font dialog
not appearing must be due to something else.

-- 
Jason Rumney