Emacs isn't always maximized and acts weird

[Timo Wiren]

In UNR 9.10, sometimes when I launch emacs-snapshot-gtk (installed from the standard repository), it isn't maximized. The weird thing is that I can't alt-tab into it and its icon doesn't show up in the panel. When this happens, Emacs can receive mouse input, but keyboard input is impossible. The only way to get rid of it is to kill it. I attached a screenshot of the situation. My system is Acer Aspire One A150 (Intel 945GME, 1024x600). There is something that can be related to this error in ~/.xsession-errors:
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x2e000a3 (Emacs)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.

[Timo Wiren (timo-wiren)]

I experienced a new variation of this bug. When I launched emacs, it didn't show up at all, but the process was created and I could see it in the process list.

[Timo Wiren (timo-wiren)]

This bug still exists in UNE 10.04.

[Timo Wiren (timo-wiren)]

Messages from .xsession-errors when this bug happens:

** (netbook-launcher:1131): DEBUG: Cannot handle Unique message of type: 2
Application Matched: GNU Emacs 23 emacs23
** (maximus:1132): DEBUG: Window opened: res_name=Emacs -- class_name=emacs23
Application Closed: emacs23

Note that in the last line, emacs is *not* closed, because all I did was I launched it.

[David J. Fiander (david-fiander)]

I am seeing this with 10.04 and Emacs 23 as well. And I get the same error messages in .xsession-errors.

[Mark Schroeder (earth2mark-eeepc)]

This bug behaves as if the emacs window sometimes escapes control by the window manager. Once launched, the window comes up, not maximized, with no icon for it on the panel and no easy way to make it the active window as a result, which means you cannot type into it. It's also intermittent... I can launch it 5 times and some number of them work and some number of them fail (but more usually fail). No consistent pattern that I've found yet. I'm using emacs22-gtk. (Gave up on emacs23 because of the big fonts and starting window size which are just wrong IMO for the netbook.) I tried emacs22 (x11) and it didn't happen for that, but I switched to emacs22-gtk quickly so maybe I didn't try the x11 version long enough to get it to happen.

[Tom Walsh (ymmothslaw)]

I am seeing the exact same behavior with emacs22-gtk that Mark Schroeder described very well above. I also do NOT see the problem with emacs22-x11, and I've tried a bunch of times. One thing with emacs22-x11 that's a little strange and may shed some light onto the situation -- the "titlebar" appears at the top of the screen for an instant, then disappears. I have to click on the window, and then the titlebar appears. It seems as if Emacs is doing something with its window at startup that is unexpected by the window manager.

[Mark Schroeder (earth2mark-eeepc)]

Two more things noticed.
(1) running 'emacs' in a terminal window seems to work all the time, vs. clicking on the icon and using the launcher. From a terminal window it brings up a maximized emacs fine multiple times, managed by the window manager. (This isn't 'emacs -nw' which is entirely different.)
(2) this problem also reproduces in a VM under VMware. Same bad behavior, also intermittent, when run in a VM on Windows. Doesn't rule out timing/race conditions, but makes it less likely.

And although (1) may be a temporary workaround, please do not consider it a solution. ;-)

[rubing (rubinglen)]

My way of dealing this is to 'open new frame' on the file menu. The new frame will be maximized and behave properly. Switch over to the problem frame and delete it.