bug#4041: 23.0.92; Emacs 23: buffer point is no longer frame-local

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > In particular, if you are switching to a buffer that is already showing in
 > another window, it currently takes you to to a location in that buffer that
 > can best be described as "arbitrary".  I was generously assuming that it was
 > some deterministic function of how the buffer is already being displayed in
 > other windows, but Martin claims that no, it just shows you "somewhere" in
 > the buffer, wherever that window-point happens to be.  It's certainly not
 > semantically meaningful to the contents of the buffer.

I never claimed that

   it just shows you "somewhere" in the buffer, wherever that
   window-point happens to be

Such a sentence doesn't make sense.  To clarify: If `switch-to-buffer'
shows a buffer in a new window or in a window that showed another buffer
before, it takes you to the position of `point' of the buffer you switch
to.  This is not an arbitrary position.

 > My proposal -- which people sound like they agree with, and Leo has even
 > implemented as an add-on -- takes the default behavior from arbitrary to not
 > only predictable but in fact useful.  The only way anyone would even notice
 > that you've changed something is if they were somehow relying on the
 > arbitrary default behavior, but as we've determined that it's not especially
 > predictable, I don't see how anyone could have been relying on it.  If we're
 > really worried about it, we can make a compatibility variable.

If you can specify a behavior that is predictable I'll be all ears.

Meanwhile I invite you to test the function I attached in my answer to
your earlier post, maybe together with the change I posted later in a
response to Eli, and tell me why the one or the other does not do what
you proposed.

martin