Re: Fatal error (11). Emacs/ Linux hosed my very long document.

[The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@aurigae.athghost7038suus.net>]

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Richard Taylor
<richard@rtaylor93.wanadoo.co.uk>
 wrote
on Fri, 17 Sep 2004 04:28:31 +0100
<2qv41kF142tp6U1@uni-berlin.de>:
> Mike Cox wrote:
>
>> I recently switched to xemacs as my default word processor so I could
>> do formatting in TEX for a very long document.  Most recently I've
>> been using Microsoft Word, the latest version.  I switched because I
>> thought that emacs had perfect stability and no crashes.  My
>> perception was formed due to the constant FSF/GPL/Linux advocacy
>> promoted on slashdot and all the comp newsgroups.
>> 
>> I was also inspired by Paul Graham's claims that LISP will not core
>> dump and you can debug and get back to work.
>> 
>> So with this background, I decided that my comprehensive review of
>> Linux, and GNU programs would be written using all open source tools
>> and operating systems.  This review was to be submitted to several
>> news sites including slashdot and OSNEWS.
>> 
>> Much to my dismay, as I was working on my very long review (about 100
>> pages typed), xemacs core dumped on me.  I was unable to recover
>> anything.  I didn't save my document because I never expected emacs to
>> core dump.  The worst I thought would happen would be some LISP error.
>> Hopefully someone can debug emacs and fix this dangerous bug.  Until
>> then, I'm probably going to go back to Microsoft Word 2003.  THe
>> following is my core dump file:
>> 
>
> I can see that all of your problems will be solved, as MS Word, in 
> common with all MS software, has an excellent reputation as robust 
> software which almost _never_ crashes, certainly not as often as 
> GNU/Linux applications.
>
> Personally, I make a point to never save my work either. Certainly not 
> once I'm getting close to the 100 page mark. Since my software is known 
> to _never_ crash, what possible good could it do me to save a copy 
> dozens of hours of hard work to my hard drive?
>
> Certainly, none of the problems you have experience could be laid at the 
> feet of the user, as it is customary to expect that one can type a 
> 100-page document without the slightest chance of:
>
> 	A) Loosing power,
>
> 	B) Hardware failiure
>
> 	C) Software failiure unrelated to word processor/text editor,
>
> 	D) General malign fate.

E) Cats walking over the keyboard.
F) Kids walking over Dad (or Mom) and inadvertantly doing things.
G) X11 crashes.  (Hey, not even Linux is perfect. :-) )
H) Alien space beings knock at one's door and invite you to participate
in a variation of the Philadelphia Experiment, after tying you up with
a bale of copper wire and attaching it to an odd-looking contrivance
that looks suspiciously like an alien nuclear battery.

(OK, so I made the last one up. :-) )

>
> You have, of course, my deepest sympathies. Rest assured that I will 
> never again take the risk of using or advocating XEmacs, GNU Emacs, or 
> any other GNU Project/FSF software. After all, it's clearly not suitable 
> for the needs of a /reasonable/ user.
>

Mike Cox?  Reasonable?  :-)  Surely you jest...

In any event, I for one would not use Emacs (mostly because I never got
around to learning it) but that's beside the point; if one wants 100
pages of document, perhaps it makes more sense, especially for web
design, to generate 100 individual Webnodes?

Then again, that leads to renumbering and/or filename
problems.  Any editor worth its salt (presumably that
includes Emacs, vi, and many others) will do the following:

[1] Open the file mydocument.whatever for readonly access, and read it
    into memory or a scratchpad file somewhere.
[2] (Optional) Save the memory or scratchpad on an occasional basis.
[3] When saving, create the new file in mydocument.whatever.new or
    .mydocument.whatever.new or ... well, whatever.
[4] After the save is confirmed (presumably by careful I/O checking;
    each I/O call returns the number of bytes written -- another
    method might be to check the size of the written file using stat()),
    mydocument.whatever can be renamed to mydocument.whatever.bak
    and .mydocument.whatever.new renamed to mydocument.whatever.

In vi, I write ':w' frequently anyway, just in case.  (I don't know the
Emacs equivalent.)

-- 
#191, ewill3@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.