[intrepid] emacs windows don’t display after compiz 0.7.6 upgrade

[Anders Kaseorg]

Binary package hint: compiz

After upgrading my intrepid amd64 system, no window is displayed when launching emacs (emacs-snapshot 1:20080228-1ubuntu1). The problem goes away after downgrading compiz from 0.7.6 to 0.7.4.

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

I had a line in my ~/.Xresources which was affecting this. I can reproduce from a clean account by running
  emacs-snapshot --xrm "Emacs.FontBackend: xft"
from within compiz.

[Vincent (zakora)]

Same problem for me. I have to use ALT+TAB in order to make emacs' window appear.

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

As of emacs-snapshot 20080727-1, this is no longer conditional on X resources. I can now reproduce from a clean account by running
  compiz --replace &
  emacs-snapshot

[Ben Aisen (beinsane11)]

For me, emacs displays, but the text in the window becomes garbled while scrolling or i-searching. Mucking with X resources only makes it not display at all sometimes.

Meanwhile it works fine in metacity, so it's definitely a compiz problem.

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

I found the first Emacs commit breaks this by default (that is, even when --xrm "Emacs.FontBackend: xft" is not specified), but it isn’t very interesting.

commit b0bd8f3d41b34f1cd857443fec1e77e060c2b324
Author: Chong Yidong <email address hidden>
Date: Wed Jun 25 22:29:20 2008 +0000

    (x_default_font_parameter): If Xft is available, first try
    Monospace-12 for the default font.

diff --git a/src/xfns.c b/src/xfns.c
index 2bf4afa..dc9d98f 100644
--- a/src/xfns.c
+++ b/src/xfns.c
@@ -3071,10 +3071,13 @@ x_default_font_parameter (f, parms)
   if (! STRINGP (font))
     {
       char *names[]
- = { "-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1",
- "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1",
+ = {
+#ifdef HAVE_XFT
            /* This will find the normal Xft font. */
- "monospace-12",
+ "Monospace-12",
+#endif
+ "-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1",
+ "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1",
            "-*-*-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1",
            /* This was formerly the first thing tried, but it finds
               too many fonts and takes too long. */

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

Aha. After starting an invisible emacs window, you can make it be displayed with Ctrl+Alt+Tab, which is bound to the Static Application Switcher’s “Next window (All windows)”. This suggests that the window is not actually invisible but is initially opened very far off the screen.

Compiz’s default “Smart” window placement algorithm seems to be at fault. If you set ccsm → Place Windows → Placement Mode to anything other than “Smart”, the emacs windows are displayed.

[Ben Aisen (beinsane11)]

All right, without "Smart" it displays consistently. The garbling seems to be another issue entirely, then.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Thank you for reporting this bug. Is this still occurring for you? Does it occur on the latest version of Ubuntu (8.10 or 9.04 beta)?

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

I am running 9.04 and the bug seems to have been fixed. I don’t know whether it is still present in 8.10, but I assume it probably is.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Closing this as fixed in Jaunty (Compiz 0.8.2). Please re-open if it re-occurs in Jaunty.