Re: [AUCTeX] Update: Text corruption

[David Kastrup]

"Axel E. Retif" <address@hidden> writes:

> With the new memory modules, but it has been different. I has happened
> twice exactly:
>
> The first, instead of the word ``según'' Meld showed in the new
> version of the file something like ``segÃn'', as if it was mistaken
> the encoding for that word along, but closing Meld and, without doing
> anything else, choosing again "External editor" from the gitk
> interface, didn't show the error again. Anyway, I also checked with
> Emacs, TeXworks and Kate and there wasn't such corruption.
>
> The second, it showed a $ instead of a space. As I don't use
> nonstopmode, it was impossible that LaTeX had typeset the file with an
> opening $ without a corresponding closing $, but I checked anyway and
> indeed there wasn't such $.
>
> Also, the text corruption that originated this thread didn't go away
> ---I still have some in an org-mode file that I have kept as a
> reminder.

Once it is saved, it will of course remain.

The other stuff, however, sounds like a troubling continuation of
previous problems.  Maybe it is chipset or CPU or board related.  On the
other hand, changing the memory modules seems to have changed something.

Scary stuff, that.  I don't think it likely that the hard disk or its
interface is at fault: your symptoms sounded so transitory that they are
likely to occur in-memory.

Stuff like a bad extension card or a damaged PCB track or terminator on
bus line D2 or a solder splash adding unwanted capacity can also lead to
such unreliable effects through reflections/delays.  Today's computers
are annoyingly high frequency devices.

At any rate, the symptoms are quite clearly pointing to a hardware
problem (if we discount the possibility of a virus author with quite a
malicious sense of humor).  It's good that it has gotten less, but still
annoying.

-- 
David Kastrup