Re: Jumping to C source from *Help*

[Stefan Monnier]

>> But I think it would be a change for the worse to do this.
>     Why exactly?
> It puts more complexity in something simple.

[ I don't see it, but let's put that aside for now. ]

OK, so you don't want a function that can either use pop-to-buffer or
signal an error depending on an extra argument.  Fair enough.

Given that I think the problem is serious enough for users such as myself
that I'd like to see this resolved, I have three alternatives (from least
preferred to most preferred):
1 - Leave switch-to-buffer as is, but introduce a new function (call it
    `pop-to-buffer-this-window').
2 - Change switch-to-buffer to call pop-to-buffer rather than signal an
    error, and introduce a new command (call it
    `switch-to-buffer-this-window') which we'd then bind to C-h b.
3 - Change switch-to-buffer to call pop-to-buffer rather than signal an
    error and leave everything else unchanged.

Option 1 has the problem that it doesn't fix anything in itself and
requires to change all the packages to use the new function.  In general,
I can't change all those packages, so I'll still have to live with
spurious errors every once in a while.

Option 3 is better because it's the simplest.  Now you might think that you
don't like it because it changes the default behavior, but think again:
it only changes the behavior in the case where you used to get an error
"Cannot switch buffers in minibuffer window" or
"Cannot switch buffers in a dedicated window".  When was the last time
you saw such an error message?  Most users have never seen this message
because they don't have dedicated windows and they never hit C-x b
while they're in the minibuffer.


        Stefan