gEDA-user: PCB command window fails

[Karel Kulhavy <clock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

GTK PCB, editing a switch footprint, I press ':' and a window which
spans the whole height of the screen appears. No text and no text input is in the window.
The width of the window is approx. 20% of the screen and it's positioned
about 20% from the left edge of the screen. The running window manager
is fvwm. The right edge of the window contains a very tall button that
doesn't end at the bottom edge. PCB is unresponsive - the response time
to click or redraw is about 15 seconds.

PCB has generated these error messages:
clock@kestrel:~/creat/ronja/trunk/schematics$ pcb

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_size_request: assertion
`GTK_IS_WIDG
ET (widget)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_size_allocate: assertion
`GTK_IS_WID
GET (widget)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_size_request: assertion
`GTK_IS_WIDG
ET (widget)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_size_allocate: assertion
`GTK_IS_WID
GET (widget)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

(pcb-bin:6050): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_propagate_expose:
assertion `GTK_
IS_WIDGET (child)' failed

CL<