>> > I gave that a go. gdb reported that kmail exited
>> normally. With some trial
>> > and error testing, I copied /usr/bin/kmail and
>> /usr/lib/libkmailprivate.so
>> > from my Slackware 12.2 package and then the problem
>> disappeared. At this
>> > point I can only guess that something in the kmail
>> composer code does not
>> > compile correctly and instead causes the entire app to
>> close rather than
>> > just the composer window.
>> >
>> > Darrell
>> >
>>
>> You may need to try something like this:
>> gdb --arg kmail --nofork
>>
>> kmail is just a kdeinit executable that will normally exit
>> as soon as the
>> GUI is loaded unless forced not to.
>
> Tim, thanks for the help!
>
> With your suggestion I received something meaningful:
>
> Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> 0xb6491dc3 in DCOPObject::~DCOPObject() () from /usr/lib/libDCOP.so.4
>
> libDCOP.so.4 is a sym link to libDCOP.so.4.2.0, which is installed by the
> kdelibs package.
>
> What do I try next?

Install the debugging packages and get me a backtrace. :-)

Tim