Enclosed .gif for your edification and amusement. Just built 21.2-b29. xemacs -vanilla The background of the whole screen is white, showing the beta logo. Fine. But no tab is showing in the gutter at all. Type any key, it reverts to *scratch* buffer, still no tab showing. C-x C-b RET a few times, I can see a "*scratch*" tab flickering ever so briefly in the gutter, but it doesn't last, disappearing in a fraction of a second. C-x C-f .emacs RET and it loads my .emacs. Now there are two tabs showing in the gutter, for .emacs and *scratch*. M-x font-lock-mode RET and it colors the buffer properly. OK. C-x C-b RET a few times to switch back and forth between .emacs and *scratch*. When *scratch* is showing, there is no tab at all. When .emacs is showing, a "*scratch*" tab now appears by itself. For the final weirdness, please note from the image that the end of my .emacs contains a tab customization: '(buffers-tab ((t (:foreground "black" :background "wheat"))) t) I do this to ensure that tabs have discernible tab borders, because otherwise the white tab background is indistinguishable from the white gutter in which they sit. You will observe that the tab is in fact nonetheless in B&W, having disregarded the customization. This is the case even though M-x customize RET gutter RET, selecting the buffer tab selection, and opening the face spec shows that I do in fact have black-on-wheat selected. I'd like to nominate gutter & tabs as the most disastrous feature XEmacs 21.2 has had, because it's been in progress for months upon months, yet is still evidently nowhere near any concept of "right". --karl