Autosave fails for narrowed buffers, particularly RMAIL

[James A. Bednar]

In GNU Emacs 20.7.1 (i386-redhat-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
 of Tue Oct 10 2000 on porky.devel.redhat.com
configured using `configure  --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info 
--prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/lib --sharedstatedir=/var --with-gcc --with-pop 
--with-x-toolkit i386-redhat-linux-gnu'

Since at least Emacs 20.3, autosaving fails for narrowed buffers,
which is a big pain because I have to stop typing and wait for the
message to go away.  This comes up very often because of RMAIL; RMAIL
buffers are always narrowed and usually unsaved, and if there are a
lot of them in memory the messages can be quite disruptive.  This
problem has been annoying me for many months, but since it happens so
often I assumed it had been fixed in 20.7.  Unfortunately, I
discovered otherwise recently when I upgraded to 20.7.

Surely there is some way for autosave to temporarily widen the buffer
before saving it?  Or is there some variable I need to set to change
this behavior?


Recent input:
C-k C-k C-k C-k C-k C-k C-n C-e C-e C-n C-n C-e C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-SPC C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-g C-x k C-g C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-f C-f C-f 
C-f C-f C-f C-f C-f C-p C-f C-k C-x k return C-x b 
r m tab return o M-p M-p M-p M-p M-p M-n return C-x 
b return o M-backspace r m tab return C-x b * m e tab 
return C-x b return M-x M-p return

Recent messages:
(No changes need to be saved)
Quit
Fontifying *mail*...
Fontifying *mail*... (regexps........)
Mark set
Quit [2 times]
No following nondeleted message
Auto-saving...
Autosaving...error for RMAIL
Auto-saving...done