From: Daniel Barker <sokal AT holyrood DOT ed DOT ac DOT uk>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: EMACS, Invalid Page Exception, Windows 98
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 09:03:03 +0100
Organization: Edinburgh University
Message-ID: <37957EB7.BF45352A@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>
References: <3795719F DOT 5ADE5F51 AT holyrood DOT ed DOT ac DOT uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup-113.publab.ed.ac.uk
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: scotsman.ed.ac.uk 932544108 17905 129.215.38.113 (21 Jul 1999 08:01:48 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: usenet AT scotsman DOT ed DOT ac DOT uk
NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Jul 1999 08:01:48 GMT
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win98; I)
X-Accept-Language: en
Lines: 64
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

I wrote:

> On going to "Clean Up Entry" from the BiBTeX-Edit menu in bibtex-mode of
> DJGPP GNU EMACS 19.34, I got an invalid page exception message. The
> error was not trapped by Dr Watson, which I have running from start-up.
> The message told me to quit all applications and re-start the computer.

[snip]

In two more attempts to perform the operation, I have crashed EMACS once
and Windows once.

After a re-boot, I repeated this operation on the same file. EMACS
froze. I killed EMACS using CTRL-ALT-DELETE and re-booted again. Then, I
pruned the BIB file I was editing to try and isolate the problem in a
small example. I repeated the operation on this file and the computer
spontaneously re-booted. Clearly there is some problem with EMACS and/or
VIPER and/or bibtex-mode and this file under Windows 98, at least on my
computer.

The pruned file was lost in the last crash but here is the entire
bibliography item that seems to cause the trouble. The whole "author"
entry is on a single line in the file, but some spaces have been changed
to newline below so that everyone can read this message easily:

@Article{Chase:psp93,
  author = 	 {M. W. Chase, D. E. Soltis, R. G. Olmstead, D. Morgan, D.
H. Les, B. D. Mishler, M. R. Duvall, R. A. Price, H. G. Hills, Y.-L.
Qiu, K. A. Kron, J. H. Rettig, E. Conti, J. D. Palmer, J. R. Manhart, K.
J. Sytsma, H. J. Michaels, W. J. Kress, K. G. Karol, W. D. Clark, M.
Hedr{\'e}n, B. S. Gaut, R. K. Jansen, K.-J. Kim, C. F. Wimpee, J. F.
Smith, G. R. Furnier, S. H. Strauss, Q.-Y. Xiang, G. M. Plunkett, P. S.
Soltis, S. M. Swensen, S. E. Williams, P. A. Gadek, C. J. Quinn, L. E.
Eguiarte, E. Golenberg, G. H. Learn, S. W. Graham, S. C. H. Barrett, S.
Dayanandan and V. A. Albert},
  title = 	 {Phylogenetics of seed plants: an analysis of nucleotide
sequences from the plastid gene \emph{rbc}L},
  journal = 	 {Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden},
  year = 	 {1993},
  OPTkey = 	 {},
  OPTvolume = 	 {80},
  OPTnumber = 	 {3},
  OPTmonth = 	 {},
  OPTpages = 	 {528--580},
  OPTnote = 	 {},
  OPTannote = 	 {}
}

My guess is that I am over-running a buffer in bibtex-mode or EMACS, and
this is having much more dire consequences than it should. However, I am
certainly not sure of this.

Advice on a fix would be welcome. I have just spent quite some time
learning how to use VIPER and bibtex-mode, and had come to like them ...
but until I discover more about this I will not be using them under
Windows.

Thank you in advance for any information. I am happy to e-mail the whole
BIB file (1935 bytes) to interested individuals as an attachment, if the
above fails to produce an error.

-- 
Daniel Barker.