Re: Debugging calendar gremlin in emacs 22.0.50.1

[ken]

Glenn Morris wrote:
> ken wrote:
> 
>> After working already dozens of times, "M-x diary" suddenly fails with
>> error message "Wrong type argument: sequencep, t".
> 
> The general way to get more information in such cases is to use M-x
> toggle-debug-on-error to turn on the debugger.
> 
> Also check if the error occurs with an emacs started with -q
> --no-site-file.

Thanks for that.  I vaguely remember those.  Now they're in my personal
documentation.

After invoking "emacs -q --no-site-file" it loads fine.  Then I visit
~/.emacs and evaluate the following that are needed for "M-x diary":

(setq diary-file "~/diary.emacs")
(setq number-of-diary-entries 14)
(setq calendar-latitude 40.4)
(setq calendar-longitude -51.9)

Everything's still good.  So then I run "M-x diary" and get this:

The local variables list in diary.emacs
contains values that may not be safe (*).

Do you really want to apply it?  You can type
y - to apply the local variables list.
n - to ignore....
! - to apply... and permanently mark these...

  * auto-fill-mode: off
    fill-column: 999999

The reason for this (I'm guessing) is that I have this at the top of
~/diary.emacs:

;-*- mode: lisp; auto-fill-mode: off; fill-column: 999999 -*-

I hit y and emacs loads what it thinks is the diary.

~/diary.emacs contains:

---------------------------------------------------------
;-*- mode: lisp; auto-fill-mode: off; fill-column: 999999 -*-

%%(diary-anniversary 9 18 1970) %d years ago it was 9/18/1970

%%(diary-anniversary 9 19 1911) %d years ago it was 9/19/1911

%%(diary-anniversary 9 20 1934) %d years ago it was 9/20/1934

%%(diary-anniversary 9 20 1885) %d years ago it was 9/20/1885

%%(diary-anniversary 9 20 1878) $d years ago it was 9/20/1878

;end of ~/diary.emacs
---------------------------------------------------------


And this is exactly the output of the output I get from the
above-invoked "M-x diary" except that the first line (beginning ";-*-
mode... is not displayed, and the rest of the lines are single-spaced
(see below)--  but if I make this buffer (entitled "Diary for Tuesday,
September 19, 2006") the current buffer, do "C-x h M-w" and paste it
somewhere, it'll show that first line.  Quite weird.

Even more weird:  If I then do "C-x 5 f ~/diary.emacs", it does nothing
the first time.  I can go make another pot of coffee, come back, and
there's no new frame.  If I then run exactly the same command a second
time, emacs then opens a new frame entitled "Diary for Tuesday,
September 19, 2006" (i.e., displayed in the modeline) and which has
exactly the same contents as the Diary buffer, i.e.:

-------------------------------------------------------

%%(diary-anniversary 9 18 1970) %d years ago it was 9/18/1970
%%(diary-anniversary 9 19 1911) %d years ago it was 9/19/1911
%%(diary-anniversary 9 20 1934) %d years ago it was 9/20/1934
%%(diary-anniversary 9 20 1885) %d years ago it was 9/20/1885
%%(diary-anniversary 9 20 1878) $d years ago it was 9/20/1878
----------------------------------------------------------

Next (in this new frame) I do "C-x f ~/diary.emacs RETURN": Nothing
happens.  Doing it a second time, nothing happens.  (I'm guessing that
emacs thinks it has already loaded the file, but a lot here is
guessing.)  So I do "C-x v ~/diary.emacs" and the file is loaded with
its (correct) name in the modeline.

Anybody understand what's going on?

                                *

Thinking again back to the sudden appearance of the gremlin, I did do a
kernel upgrade.  Though I really don't see how it could be the cause of
the problem, that was the only thing that changed (that I can think of,
that I know of) between the time I wasn't getting the error message
"Wrong type argument: sequencep, t" and when I started getting it.  The
kernel used now is 2.6.11.4-21.14-default.