Thanks for your help. If I add your patch below to my .emacs I get

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument listp "Recent")

The grep.el example that Eli mentioned is not that straightforward. Well,
I'm not a lisp techie but maybe I'll look at it again this weekend.

Best,
Bernhard


On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 11:20 AM, David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>wrote:

> On 24 Oct 2008, at 20:36, Bernhard Koenig wrote:
>
>
>  you get a list of "recent files". In Emacs, even with the recentf
>> extension, it seems impossible to add a "recentf-open-files" icon to
>> the toolbar. Of course you can use keybindings, but some people like
>> the mouse and the "recent files" in the menubar require more clicks.
>>
>
> It's perfectly possible.  I have it in Aquamacs, and it just took me a bit
> of Lisp code.  The full code is in aquamacs-tool-bar.el if you want to look
> it up.  Specifically, this is what does it:
>
>
>  (tool-bar-add-item '("history" . "Recent") (lambda ()
>                              (interactive)
>                              (popup-menu (easy-menu-filter-return
>                                           (recentf-make-menu-items)
>                                           "Open Recent")))
>                     'recent-files
>                     :visible '(and (boundp 'recentf-mode) recentf-mode)
>                     :help "Pop up the Recent Files menu")
>
>
>
>