On 2014-07-21 19:45, Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com> writes:

> Alas, despite years of emacs abuse, I have not managed to master even
> the rudiments of emacs lisp, and don't even know how to edebug.

To get you started, you could try the following.

- set up two emacs frames
- in one frame, do a "M-x describe-function" then type the name of the
  function of interest (smtpmail-send-it iirc)
- there will be a link to smtpmail.el, follow it
- this will take you to the definition of the function, there type "C-u
  C-M-x" to tell emacs you want to edebug it
- now in the other frame, do what you need to do to trigger the bug
- when the function is called, you should see a small triangle in the
  fringe showing the point being executed. You can step through the
  different instructions by hitting space, and you will see in the echo
  area the results of the computations

You can interrupt the debugging at any time by hitting 'q'. And if you
no longer want to debug that function, hit "C-M-x" while in the
function's source code, or restart emacs.

Try it, it's fun! ;-)

Alan

-- 
OpenPGP Key ID : 040D0A3B4ED2E5C7