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

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> I renamed the menu-bar.el.gz, menu-bar.elc, tmm.el.gz, and tmm.elc
> files from emacs 23.1 and then copied the same files from emacs 22.3
> to the 23.1 lisp directory.

When something gets worse between versions, the first thing to do is
check etc/NEWS to see if the change was conscious and if so how to
revert it in your .emacs.  In this case, I think the etc/NEWS won't
say anything, which means you should report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.

> The end result was no change in the behavior of the buffer menu bar
> item in tmm-menubar. Pressing F10 then "b" gave me just the same four
> options, with no list of open buffers. There's something going on
> beyond the tmm and menu-bar files.

Indeed, I see the problem: the GUI's menu bar gives me all the buffers,
but F10 b only shows me the 4 other choices.  Please M-x report-emacs-bug.

> This is a little frustrating because the Emacs 22 buffer item in tmm-
> menubar makes buffer switching [I]very[/I] easy: Hit F10, b, and the
> first letter of the buffer I want. Then the menubar buffer goes away
> and the buffer I selected is up.

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