It looks to me like this is just a side effect of some rationalization of the restriction markers to be processed with other markers. I'd say this is just a bug to be fixed. Specifically, I don't see why it's useful or intuitive to allow insertion into an inaccessible area of the buffer in this special case only. In fact, you can repeat `mess-with-buffer' and it will repeatedly insert into the inaccessible region. And of course if you insert (== insert-after-marker) at the end of the buffer, it doesn't go after the end of the visible buffer. Ben? Regarding the shell buffer starting narrowed problem, it is in fact a result of the use of insert-before-markers by the new comint.el code. Try this: (defun mess-with-buffer () "Mess around with restrictions in a buffer." (interactive) (save-restriction (widen) (goto-char (point-min)) (insert-before-markers "This is a test."))) On 21.4, you will see "This is a test." at the beginning of the victim buffer. On 21.5, you will see no change to your buffer, unless you happen to notice the word "Narrowed" appear on the modeline. If you then widen the buffer, you will see "This is a test." at the beginning. The difference is that, on 21.4, insert-before-markers does not change the state saved by save-restriction. On 21.5, insert-before-markers modifies the markers saved by save-restriction as well as all other markers associated with the buffer. Therefore, on restoring the state when leaving save-restriction, the code sees that the buffer does not start at position 1, and thus identifies it as narrowed. If we are concerned about Emacs compatibility, we need to change the 21.5 code to match the behavior of 21.4. If we are not concerned about Emacs compatibility, then I need an alternative to insert-before-markers that works on both 21.4 and 21.5. Thanks, -- Jerry James, Assistant Professor james(a)xemacs.org Computer Science Department http://www.cs.usu.edu/~jerry/ Utah State University -- School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.