Thanks for the help.  The problem was with display-buffer-for-wide-screen.el

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/download/display-buffer-for-wide-screen.el

Once I removed that from my .emacs, things worked fine.
I would still like to see a proper example of elisp code setting the
display-buffer-alist.

Thanks,
Paddy

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 3:51 AM, martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at> wrote:

> > I'm having a very hard time understanding the documentation for
> > display-buffer-alist.  emacs24 behaves differently than emacs23.  Here
> > is the behaviour that I am used to and would like to return to.
> >
> > Emacs 23:
> > C-x C-f  (find-file)
> > the file that I select opens in the current window
> >
> >
> > Emacs 24:
> > C-x C-f (find-file)
> > the file that I select opens in another window
>
> With emacs -Q the file is not shown in another window on my machine.  So
> please report this as a bug either using emacs -Q or by providing us the
> relevant details from your .emacs.
>
>
> > the window that the file will open in, in emacs 24 is unpredictable,
> > making it very difficult to organize a multiple window session.
>
> Please describe in the bug report what and how this happens.
>
>
> > Could someone please post the setq command to get emacs 24 to behave the
> way I am used to.
>
> Emacs 24 should behave as Emacs 23 in the example you gave.  So there
> should be no need for such a command.
>
> martin
>