[ESS-bugs] ess-mode 12.04; Invalid character 8212

[Martin Maechler]

Dear Stefano,

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 20:03, Stefano Conti <s.conti at gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> Dear ESS developers team,
>
> I hope this is the correct e-mail address (and procedure) for me to get in touch with you regarding an issue I've been experiencing with the latest ESS release (12.04).

Yes, that's fine  (using the public list "Ess-help at ...." would also be fine).

>
> Upon starting up Emacs (GNU Emacs 22.1.1) I invariably obtain the following error message:
>
> error: Invalid character: 8212, #o20024, #x2014
>
> Please find also attached a screenshot with the more detailed error trace; apologies for being unable to paste the full message into this e-mail: for some reason I'm unable to extract anything other than garbled code from my Emacs buffer.

(screen shots typically don't get through the anti-spam anti-virus
filters for the mailing lists, here)

>
> Unfortunately I was unable to obtain any information regarding the above issue from the Internet; as such, I should be grateful for any insight / suggestion you may have to share regarding the above.  With many thanks in advance for taking your time, kind regards,

12.04 was distributed with all the lisp/*.elc  files (in addition to
the *.el files).
As your Emacs version is a bit old,
it could be the case that the *.elc files don't work with your emacs.
You should be fine, if you *delete* all the   lisp/*.elc  files.

Can you try that  and report back?

Best regards,
Martin Mächler
>
> --
> Dr Stefano Conti
>
>
> Emacs  : GNU Emacs 22.1.1 (i386-mandrake-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
>  of 2008-10-27 on titan.mandriva.com, modified by Mandriva
> Package: ess-mode 12.04
>
> current state:
> ==============
> (setq
>  ess-language "Initial"
>  ess-dialect nil
>  ess-ask-for-ess-directory t
>  ess-ask-about-transfile nil
>  ess-directory nil
>  ess-keep-dump-files 'ask
>  ess-source-directory "/tmp/"
>  )
>
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>
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