Re: SIAG on an Alpha machine

[Ulric Eriksson <ulric@edu.stockholm.se>]

On Sun, 4 Oct 1998, Brian E.W. Wood wrote:

> I've been running Linux on various DEC Alpha platforms for a couple of years.
> The major problem with this platform has been the lack of a decent graphical
> browser and the lack of a decent WYSIWYG word processor. The browser problem
> has been solved but the WP problem remains.
> 
> I spotted SIAG 3.0.5 a while back, hoping that it (actually pw) might be a
> solution to the lack of a WP. It compiled without errors using egcs-1.1b.
> 
> Unfortunately when siag or pw is run it segfaults. Strangely, if I move the
> mouse *very* slowly I can run for some time and actually create and print files
> but it will eventually segfault. If I move the mouse quickly it will segfault i
> mmediately. I tried the just-released 3.0.6 with the same result. This happens
> with both siag and pw.
> 
> I did get a lot of compiler warnings about conversions between integers and
> pointers. The Alpha uses 32-bit integers and 64-bit pointers so conversions
> between them which work on an Intel machine (where they are both 32-bit) cause
> strange things to happen on the Alpha.
> 
> Has anybody else tried tried running on an alpha? Is there anything I can do to
> figure out where the problem lies? I have tried many other WPs like Maxwell,
> Thot, Papyrus, AbiWord and others. SIAG comes the closest by far to being a
> usable WP.

I don't have an account on an alpha, so I can't test it. But here are a
couple of clues.

1. The conversion between XtPointer and int is something many X programs
do and IIRC the definition of XtPointer is supposed to allow the
conversion.

2. There are many places where arguments which should be declared as long
are instead declared as int. This makes no difference on a 32-bit
platform, but I don't know if the Alpha has 64-bit longs.

Have you tried running it under gdb? If it is an int/long problem, it
should be easy to catch.

Ulric