Freeciv does not work with replacement libraries for the Athena widget
sets, such as Xaw3D and neXtaw.  (Debian packages xaw3dg and nextawg).

If you install the Debian package xaw-wrappers, freeciv will use it to
run with the original Xaw library even if you have the replacement
libraries installed.

Richard Braakman

PS: now there is a separate binary package (freeciv-xaw3d) which runs under
xaw3dg. You might want to try it.

One of the authors, Peter Joachim Unold, said this about the xaw problem:

> Anyway there's no simple fix, because the problem is that I've subclassed
> the Command widget, to produce something that also can hold a pixmap(instead
> of just a b/w bitmap or a text). However it's not possible to subclass in a
> way, which works under all incarnations of libxaw:
> 
> This is class of the pixcomm widget:
> 
> typedef struct _PixcommandClassRec {
>   CoreClassPart             core_class;
>   SimpleClassPart           simple_class;
>   LabelClassPart            label_class;
>   CommandClassPart          command_class;
>   PixcommClassPart          pixcomm_class;
> } PixcommClassRec;
> 
> A version which ran under libxaw3d, would need other fields, as xaw3d's 
> Label widget is "derived" from different "subclasses". The xaw3d author
> mentions this too.
> 
> Anyway I first realised this after I had made and used the widget all
> over the program. Now afterwards, I'm just disappointed by Intrinsics
> programming. Any Intrinsics manual will tell you how powerful subclassing 
> is but in reality it's useless, unless you subclass from Core direct.
> One day I'll fix it.
> 
>  best regards
>   Peter