dnlt0hn5ntzhbqkv51 wrote:
> 1. The emerge stoped at one point because the uninstall failed to remove
> an obscure library (perhaps /var/lib/xkb ? sorry, I should have noted
> it). But emerge identified the directory and told me to delete it. A
> restart allowed successful completion.

This directory was formerly under configuration protection so we have to
tell the user to delete it manually.

> 2. Before starting, I renamed /etc/X11 to /etc/X11old so that any
> accumulated junk would be out of the picture, and so that the new
> xorg.conf.example file would be clean. Heh, it doesn't build a new
> xorg.conf.example file, so I copied over the old file and everything
> worked - except for the rgb file.

Yeah, there's a bug for this -- modular X currently lacks a rule to
create it.

> 3. My first xmessage complained of not understanding "black". So I
> emerged rgb, edited the xorg.conf file, and repointed it.
> 
> RgbPath    "/usr/share/X11/rgb"

You should be able to comment out RgbPath

> 4. I routinely use xterm, xmessage, and xkill - all needed to be
> emerged. Problem here was that eix and eix -S didn't find them, but
> emerge did.

Perhaps you haven't regenerated eix's cache lately?

> 5. revdep-rebuild found the missing libXaw.so.8, but crashed during
> re-emergence (bad order, and something else that I did not understand).
> So I emerged them one at a time in a different order, and everything
> worked except for the kde office applications.

If you just want the libXaw.so.8 back, emerge libXaw with USE=xprint.

Thanks for your detailed report,
Donnie