Re: Lost functionality in buffer item in menu bar from 22 to 23...

[Drew Ames <jxa127@verizon.net>]

I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this thread, but here goes:

On Mar 22, 11:54 am, Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> We (Emacs maintainers) usually don't pay too much attention to the
> actual structure of the menus: we assume the menus are only used for
> "advertisement" purposes, so we care about the fact that the structure
> makes sense and makes commands easy to find, but not so much about
> whether a command is quick to access.  I.e. as soon as you use a feature
> often enough to care about where the command is located in the menu, you
> should try and use a key-binding instead.
>
> E.g. for buffer switching there are many different options available
> which might suit you even better, starting with just C-x b, or refined
> via iswitchb, etc...
>
>         Stefan

Stefan,

Your points are well-taken. I do in fact tend to use the menu mostly
as a cheat sheet to find or recall seldom-used commands while using
key-bindings for most of my work.

As for the different options for buffer switching, I've been playing a
lot with buffer-menu and ibuffer. I would _almost_ be happy to simply
bind ibuffer to F9 and call that when I need to switch buffers --
except there's one thing that the Emacs 22 tmm-menubar does that
ibuffer does not.

What I really like about the tmm-menubar is that it prompts for a one-
key selection of menu and sub-menu items. Specifically, the buffer
item of tmm-menubar lists specific buffers and provides a one-key
shortcut to each of them. It would be wonderful if ibuffer offered
that feature.

(As an aside, the other think I like about Emacs 22's tmm-menubar is
that it shows the keyboard shortcuts next to the menu items --
something that the Emasc 23 tmm-menubar does not seem to consistently
do as the example in the first post shows.)

As for why the bug is happening in Emacs 23, I'm no closer to an
answer. Bearing in mind that I'm, at best, a _very_ poor Emacs lisp
hacker, the best I can determine by looking at tmm.el is that tmm
draws most of its variables from x-menu-bar. Perhaps there was a
change in x-menu-bar in Emacs 23 that is causing the bug?

Regards,

-Drew Ames