Jan, Thanks for responding. I'm sorry that you didn't get much useful information from my initial report. Please let me try again, and I will make an effort to be clearer this time. First, I'd like to provide you with some system information. Operating System: (1:0)srevilak:~$ cat /etc/SuSE-release openSUSE 11.2 (i586) VERSION = 11.2 (0:0)srevilak:~$ uname -a Linux srevilak 2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2009-10-26 15:49:03 +0100 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Window Manager: (0:0)srevilak:~$ kde4-config --version Qt: 4.5.3 KDE: 4.3.1 (KDE 4.3.1) "release 6" kde4-config: 1.0 Contents of .Xresources (a single line, containing a comment): (0:0)srevilak:~$ cat .Xresources ! .Xresources Contents of .emacs (a single line, containing a comment): (0:0)srevilak:~$ cat .emacs ; .emacs Finally, to be sure that ~/.Xresources agrees with our current environment. (0:0)srevilak:~$ xrdb .Xresources First, I will start emacs with the command line /usr/local/emacs-23.1.91/bin/emacs --no-init-file --no-site-file -geometry 86x44-0+0 figure-1.png shows a snapshot of my screen after starting emacs. As you can see, emacs occupies most of the vertical space on the screen. Next, I will quit emacs, then run the following command line /usr/local/emacs-23.1.91/bin/emacs --no-init-file --no-site-file -geometry 86x45-0+0 Notice that I have increased the height from 44 to 45, which is just a little too large to fit on the screen; the rest of the command line is unchanged. The result of this appears in figure-2.png. Observe that figure-1.png and figure-2.png are quite different. As you noted before, this could be the Window Manager's doing. For my third (and final) snapshot, I would like to provide evidence which suggests that it is not the window manager. /usr/bin/emacs --no-init-file --no-site-file -geometry 86x45-0+0 Above, /usr/bin/emacs is emacs 23.1.1, as packaged with OpenSUSE 11.2 (you'll see this from emacs' splash screen). The result of running this command appears in figure-3.png. As you can see, figure-3.png resembles figure-1.png much more than figure-2.png. The difference between figure-2.png and figure-3.png is the core of my issue. Specifically, * When Emacs-23.1.1 is confronted with a geometry that is too large for the height of the screen, then emacs-23.1.1 respects the geometry as best as it can. In figure-3.png, we see that Emacs-23.1.1 took up as much of the vertical screen space as was possible. * When Emacs-23.1.91 is confronted with a geometry that is too large for the height of the screen, then emacs-23.1.91 does not try to respect the geometry as best as it can. As you can see from figure-2.png, emacs-23.1.91 opted for a much smaller height. (In figure-2.png, you can also see a very different appearance in the splash screen itself.) In summary, I believe that the behavior shown in figure-3.png (produced by emacs-23.1.1) is more correct than the behavior shown in figure-2.png (produced by emacs-23.1.91). Please let me know if you'd like me to provide any additional details. Steve Revilak