How can I reorder the items of the menubar?

How can I reorder the items of the menubar?

[Keira]

I've used emacs before and it used to be that the first item on the
menubar was "Buffers", personally, I like having it there, besides
that a few other things where different, the filemenus for example.

How can I make the new emacs (21.2.1) behave the same as the old emacs
(20 or 19 something...)

Thank you,
Gideon M.L. Klok

Re: How can I reorder the items of the menubar?

[lawrence mitchell]

Keira wrote:

> I've used emacs before and it used to be that the first item on the
> menubar was "Buffers", personally, I like having it there, besides
> that a few other things where different, the filemenus for example.

> How can I make the new emacs (21.2.1) behave the same as the old emacs
> (20 or 19 something...)

It's possible to do this, though slightly involved, so bear with
me.  First off, if you don't feel comfortable with compiling
Emacs from source (and don't have at least a minimal knowledge of
Emacs lisp), it might be too much effort.

Basically, though, the procedure is as follows:
i) get the Emacs-21 sources --- available from all gnu.org
   mirrors.
ii) Unpack them, and read the installation instructions.
iii) Find the file menu-bar.el (probably in the lisp/
     subdirectory of the Emacs source).
iv) Redefine the order in which the menu-bar is constructed.
    (look for lines of the form
      `(cons "Tools" menu-bar-tools-menu)' --- for (e.g.) the Tools
    menu.)
    Menu bars are "pushed" onto a menu-bar stack, hence, if you
    want a menu to appear last, you should move its definition
    towards the top of the file and vice versa.
v) After you've changed menu-bar.el to your satisfaction, save
   it.
vi) Follow the installation instructions to compile and install
    Emacs for your system.

Alternately stay with Emacs 20 (unless you have any dying need to
use Emacs 21). ;)
-- 
lawrence mitchell <wence@gmx.li>

Re: How can I reorder the items of the menubar?

[Keira]

lawrence mitchell <wence@gmx.li> wrote in message news:<ould6rbp8n1.fsf@ID-97657.usr.dfncis.de>...

Thank you for your help.

[snip]
> Basically, though, the procedure is as follows:
> i) get the Emacs-21 sources --- available from all gnu.org
>    mirrors.
> ii) Unpack them, and read the installation instructions.
> iii) Find the file menu-bar.el (probably in the lisp/
>      subdirectory of the Emacs source).

I can't compile Emacs my self (no room in $HOME), and root will not do
it.

> iv) Redefine the order in which the menu-bar is constructed.
>     (look for lines of the form
>       `(cons "Tools" menu-bar-tools-menu)' --- for (e.g.) the Tools
>     menu.)
>     Menu bars are "pushed" onto a menu-bar stack, hence, if you
>     want a menu to appear last, you should move its definition
>     towards the top of the file and vice versa.

Could I (in $HOME/.emacs) remove the whole menu definition (basicly
unload the default lisp/menu-bar.el) and then load a new menu-bar.el,
maybe even the one from Emacs 20? If yes, how would I do this?

> v) After you've changed menu-bar.el to your satisfaction, save
>    it.
> vi) Follow the installation instructions to compile and install
>     Emacs for your system.
> 
> Alternately stay with Emacs 20 (unless you have any dying need to
> use Emacs 21). ;)

Emacs 20, I regrete, is nolonger available on the system.

Gideon