Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!ngo From: ngo@tammy.harvard.edu (Tom Ngo) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Scrambled help file Message-ID: Date: 10 Mar 89 07:10:10 GMT References: <8903100545.AA27062@columbia.edu> Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu Distribution: na Organization: Harvard Chemistry Dept., Harvard University Lines: 32 In-reply-to: sethr@CUNIXC.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU's message of 10 Mar 89 05:42:58 GMT In article <8903100545.AA27062@columbia.edu> sethr@CUNIXC.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Seth Robertson) writes: > I have GNU emacs 18.52, and I have recently noticed that my help > file (or at least what I see when I do a C-h A) is scrambled beyond > all help. The names of the commands come up fine, but the actual > explanations of the commands are incomplete and are frequent > describing totally different functions. I think you should try to byte-compile the files lisp/*.el to make a fresh set of lisp/*.elc files, then remake etc/DOC. You should be able to do the latter by switching to the directory src/, and typing "make -f xmakefile ../DOC". The documentation file etc/DOC is generated by a program called etc/make-docfile, which reads in your src/*.o (object) files and your lisp/*.elc (byte-compiled lisp) files. Commonly the latter are corrupt, for one reason or another. More likely, the DOC file itself is either corrupt or has been compiled for a different machine--I do believe that it is machine dependent. If you are trying to run emacs and a network environment with different machines, you may want to maintain separarate etc/ directories for each of the different architectures that you wish to support. I hope this helps. I had the same problem for a while. -- --Tom Ngo e-mail: ngo@endor.harvard.edu US mail: 12 Oxford St Box 201 Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: (617) 495-1768 (office)