Emacs crashes when using "fixed width" bdf fonts on Win32

[Patrick J. Roden]

Hello,

I've looked for a solution to this problem, but have 
found nothing on why this could be happening, so I
have
to assume it is a bug that no one has reported yet.  I
am a tester at a small software company, so I'm aware
of the importance of being able to recreate a problem.


The problem will take a little explanation, but first
I'll just start with the basic, how to recreate it,
and
what exactly happens.


My version and system info as reported by Emacs:

GNU Emacs 21.1.1 (i386-msvc-windows95.1212) of
2001-10-22 on buffy


I reduced my .emacs file down to the following lines:

(setq bdf-directory-list
      '("~/bdffonts"))
(setq w32-bdf-filename-alist
           (w32-find-bdf-fonts bdf-directory-list))
(set-default-font
"-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO8859-1")
;;(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font .
"-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO8859-1"))
;;(speedbar-frame-mode)

Problem one:

Emacs seems to start fine, and use the specified bdf
font.  However, when I open a file, and attempt to
scroll past line 34 using either the down arrow, or 
C-n Emacs crashes with an invalid page fault.  The
exact information provided by Windows is:
EMACS caused an invalid page fault in
module EMACS.EXE at 014f:01037f61.

Problem two:

Uncomment the last two lines of the .emacs file above.
Emacs will not even completely start now.  As soon as
the speedbar frame appears it crashes with an invalid
page fault.  The exact information provided by Windows
is:
EMACS caused an invalid page fault in
module EMACS.EXE at 014f:010416a8.


The two different page faults are the same all the
time, depending on whether the last two lines of the
.emacs file have been commented out or not.


The bdf fonts I am using were taken from X11 fonts 
that I use with Cygwin.  There are only three fonts 
in the specified bdffonts directory. I took all three
from the misc fonts folder of the X11 fonts.
The three fonts are:
6x13-ISO8859-1.bdf
6x13B-ISO8859-1.bdf
6x13O-ISO8859-1.bdf

Emacs seems to find and use the bold and oblique fonts
just fine, without anything specific from me.  I had 
to create the bdf formatted fonts from pcf fonts with 
a small program called pcf2bdf.

When Emacs actually starts and displays a file, it
looks as though it is confused about the height of the
Buffer.  You can see that it stops displaying text at
the 34th line, but there is a white space between the 
last displayed line and the mini-buffer.  Also, you
can
see two very light gray margins on either side of the
text that end at the 34th line and don't continue to
the mini-buffer.  Attempting to scroll past the 34th
line crashes the program.

I have a screenshot of Emacs with the 34 line limit.  
I also have a gzipped tar ball of my bdffonts folder,
containing the three fonts.  I have not sent either
with this bug report, but if you need them I will send
them to you.

As a final note,  I wanted to get Emacs on Win32
to display a font similar to the "fixed" font that 
is found on *nix systems.  The documentation said
that you could use bdf fonts in Emacs, so I gave it a
shot.  Unfortunately I didn't understand the
documentation at all.  I have read and reread the
section about using and creating font sets.  I still
have no idea of what a "font set" is, or how to create
one.  I don't know what one calls a created "font
set",
etc.  This is the reason I chose to just specify the
default-font in my startup file; basically, it worked
(sort of).  The only reason I mention this is because
in the section on reporting bugs in the Emacs manual 
it says you would like to know about bugs or not
helpful portions of the documention as well.


Thank You,

Patrick Roden
patjroden@yahoo.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards®
http://movies.yahoo.com/