rms@UUNET.UU.NET (Richard M. STALLMAN) (03/12/89)
We have found locally that we need the following modification to lisp/term/x-win.el in order to get GNU emacs to start up properly with X11. This is true on Sequent Symmetries, Sun3s, and Sun4s. I tested Emacs 18.53 with X11 on a Sun 3 before release. It seemed to work properly. The change you propose only appears to work if you don't check it completely. It introduces a bug, that C-g fails to interrupt a program. The fact that you proposed this change suggests that you are using a system which has bugs in the support for SIGIO. If I could program Emacs to work correctly on such systems I would do so. But I believe this is impossible; certainly no one has told me any way to do it. I will not install a half-measure in Emacs which fixes the problem only in certain cases; if I did so, then users would think that Emacs is simply unreliable. I would rather distribute an Emacs that fails completely on systems with bugs than distribute one which will only fail occasionally. I know that some Unix system users would prefer I took a different attitude, but remember that use on Unix is a side-benefit as far as I am concerned. The GNU kernel, when we have one, will not have this bug.