Problem of display of emacs under Windows 98

[zaurus dvm]

Hi all emacs users,

I am a newbie of emacs and BSD and am very eager to get the hang of
it. I am trying to run the precompiled emacs for windows
(emacs-23.1-bin-i386.zip) on my 10-year-old laptop running Windows 98
SE. The runemacs.exe runs, but the toolbar icons and the main frame
cannot be displayed.
Here is a screenshot:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2573/3949708022_6f3ba092db_o.jpg
Running with -nw option is fine, though. I need the window mode as I
want to use CJK input methods directly.
I have both downloaded and even compiled libxpm.dll (using GCC for
mingw) but to no avail. The laptop is running with 16-bit display
only.
The interesting thing is the same emacs binary runs perfectly under XP
on another newer machine (32-bit display).
What would be the cause of the issue? Any suggestion is much appreciated!

Dave

[John A Pershing Jr]

Have you tried grabbing the edge/corner of the Emacs window and
stretching it out?  Or, clicking on the middle icon to maximize the window?

It very well may be that the current Emacs for Windows does not support
Win-98, too.  I can't verify this, as I haven't run Win-98 in as long as
I can remember.

  -jp


Dave Man wrote:

> Hi all emacs users,
>
> I am a newbie of emacs and BSD and am very eager to get the hang of
> it. I am trying to run the precompiled emacs for windows
> (emacs-23.1-bin-i386.zip) on my 10-year-old laptop running Windows 98
> SE. The runemacs.exe runs, but the toolbar icons and the main frame
> cannot be displayed.
> Here is a screenshot:
> http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2573/3949708022_6f3ba092db_o.jpg
> Running with -nw option is fine, though. I need the window mode as I
> want to use CJK input methods directly.
> I have both downloaded and even compiled libxpm.dll (using GCC for
> mingw) but to no avail. The laptop is running with 16-bit display
> only.
> The interesting thing is the same emacs binary runs perfectly under XP
> on another newer machine (32-bit display).
> What would be the cause of the issue? Any suggestion is much appreciated!
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
>  

[zaurus dvm]

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply. The funny thing is the emacs window resists all
kinds of resizing. "Maximizing" simply shifts the tiny window to the
top left corner without actual resizing.
As for win98 support, I read both in the official docs and the
emacsw32 page saying that it is supported.
Today I will try emacs on a clean win98 install and report here soon.
The laptop I have tested is running a 98lited version.
It would be a great pity if emacs no longer runs on win98, although it
launches quickly in the old setup of merely a Cyrix MediaGX 166Mhz and
 64MB RAM.
Any successful win98 story out there? :-/

Regards,
Dave

2009/9/25, John A Pershing Jr <pershing@...>:

> Have you tried grabbing the edge/corner of the Emacs window and
> stretching it out?  Or, clicking on the middle icon to maximize the window?
>
> It very well may be that the current Emacs for Windows does not support
> Win-98, too.  I can't verify this, as I haven't run Win-98 in as long as
> I can remember.
>
>   -jp
>
>
> Dave Man wrote:
>> Hi all emacs users,
>>
>> I am a newbie of emacs and BSD and am very eager to get the hang of
>> it. I am trying to run the precompiled emacs for windows
>> (emacs-23.1-bin-i386.zip) on my 10-year-old laptop running Windows 98
>> SE. The runemacs.exe runs, but the toolbar icons and the main frame
>> cannot be displayed.
>> Here is a screenshot:
>> http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2573/3949708022_6f3ba092db_o.jpg
>> Running with -nw option is fine, though. I need the window mode as I
>> want to use CJK input methods directly.
>> I have both downloaded and even compiled libxpm.dll (using GCC for
>> mingw) but to no avail. The laptop is running with 16-bit display
>> only.
>> The interesting thing is the same emacs binary runs perfectly under XP
>> on another newer machine (32-bit display).
>> What would be the cause of the issue? Any suggestion is much appreciated!
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

[Jason Rumney-4]

Dave Man wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> Thanks for your reply. The funny thing is the emacs window resists all
> kinds of resizing. "Maximizing" simply shifts the tiny window to the
> top left corner without actual resizing.
> As for win98 support, I read both in the official docs and the
> emacsw32 page saying that it is supported.
>  

Officially, the developers try to maintain support for Windows 9x, but
we do so blindly, only finding out about problems if users tell us.

Your problem may be caused by the new font backend code. I suspect that
uniscribe may be available on your Windows 98 installation but unusable
due to lack of full Unicode support in Windows 98.  If this is the
problem, then it may help to start Emacs from the command-line as:

emacs -Q -xrm Emacs.fontBackend:gdi


If this works, then you can workaround the problem by modifying the
shortcut that starts emacs to add the "-xrm Emacs.fontBackend:gdi"
arguments to it.

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 04:52, Jason Rumney <jasonr@...> wrote:

> If this works, then you can workaround the problem by modifying the shortcut
> that starts emacs to add the "-xrm Emacs.fontBackend:gdi" arguments to it.

Or set Emacs.fontBackend in the registry.

    Juanma