"Command" pulldown menu doesn't work

[Gary Young]

When I open a latex document in emacs, the auctex menu and toolbar
appear as expected. I can use my mouse (a Synaptics touchpad) to reveal
the pulldown menus for the categories "file," "latex" and so forth. The
only exception is the category "command." When I double-tap on
"command," nothing happens.

I'm running emacs 21.4 and auctex 11.54 on gentoo linux. (I'm aware that
there's an auctex 11.55, but 11.54 is the latest version in gentoo's
"portage" system; in any event, at one point I tried hand installing
11.55 and had the same problem.)

I saw a reference in the release notes about a problem with an earlier
version of auctex not being able to recognize the appropriate commands.
I don't think that's the problem in my case because I can execute the
commands when I access the menu through the F10 key. (That also leads me
to believe the problem is not a result of the way I've set up
permissions on my system; that is a possibility though, since I'm fairly
new to linux and indeed to emacs as well.)

This is a fairly minor annoyance, but I would appreciate any pointers on
where the problem may lie.

[Ralf Angeli]

Post by Gary Young
When I open a latex document in emacs, the auctex menu and toolbar
appear as expected. I can use my mouse (a Synaptics touchpad) to reveal
the pulldown menus for the categories "file," "latex" and so forth. The
only exception is the category "command." When I double-tap on
"command," nothing happens.
I'm running emacs 21.4 and auctex 11.54 on gentoo linux. (I'm aware that
there's an auctex 11.55, but 11.54 is the latest version in gentoo's
"portage" system; in any event, at one point I tried hand installing
11.55 and had the same problem.)

Are you using Emacs compiled with the Motif toolkit together with KDE?
Then the following link might help you:

<URL:http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18518>

Somebody should probably file a bug report against KDE as this problem
pops up now and then (in case it really is the problem you are seeing).

[Brett Presnell]

Post by Gary Young
When I open a latex document in emacs, the auctex menu and toolbar
appear as expected. I can use my mouse (a Synaptics touchpad) to
reveal the pulldown menus for the categories "file," "latex" and so
forth. The only exception is the category "command." When I double-tap
on "command," nothing happens.
I'm running emacs 21.4 and auctex 11.54 on gentoo linux. (I'm aware
that there's an auctex 11.55, but 11.54 is the latest version in
gentoo's "portage" system; in any event, at one point I tried hand
installing 11.55 and had the same problem.)

There is a gentoo bug report about this at

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18518

My solution to the problem appears there, posted on 2004-07-02, but
there are some more recent comments now, including this one, which, if
it works, is certainly much simpler than recompiling emacs:

The problem with the Command menu not working is related to an obscure
conflict with KDE. This is explained in detail at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.windows.x.motif/browse_frm/thread/c20cc6d768acd666

The way I "fixed" the problem is to change the following line in
tex.el from:
(defconst TeX-command-menu-name "Command"
to:
(defconst TeX-command-menu-name "Commands"

The strange this about this is that we don't run KDE, so I'm not sure
why an obscure conflict with KDE would affect us. Anyway, I'm posting
this here in case the auctex developers might be interested.
--
Brett Presnell
Department of Statistics
University of Florida
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~presnell/

"We don't think that the popularity of an error makes it the truth."
-- Richard Stallman

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[Gary Young]

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 14:47:56 -0500, Brett Presnell

Post by Brett Presnell
snip<
There is a gentoo bug report about this at
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18518
My solution to the problem appears there, posted on 2004-07-02, but
there are some more recent comments now, including this one, which, if
The problem with the Command menu not working is related to an obscure
conflict with KDE. This is explained in detail at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.windows.x.motif/browse_frm/thread/c20cc6d768acd666
The way I "fixed" the problem is to change the following line in
(defconst TeX-command-menu-name "Command"
(defconst TeX-command-menu-name "Commands"
The strange this about this is that we don't run KDE, so I'm not sure
why an obscure conflict with KDE would affect us. Anyway, I'm posting
this here in case the auctex developers might be interested.

Thank you, Brett and Ralf.

I recompiled emacs with your USE flag and it cleared up the menu
problem and a couple of other emacs problems (for instance, a
windows-style "find file" box that overhung the edge of the screen).

I've never filed a bug report before, but I'd be glad to do so. I'm
just not sure where to send it. This sounds like a KDE problem but is
it also a gentoo bug for not addressing it?