You used to be able to do (buffer-string nil nil somebuffer) to get the entire string out of a buffer. With XEmacs 21.2, it has been changed to just take a 'buffer' arguent, but it is _supposed_ to be backwards compatible and take 'buffer old-end old-buffer' arguments. But if you pass in nil for 'buffer', it thinks you want the new way and 'nil' means current-buffer. This broke the content-id (cid) url handling in Emacs/W3 + pGnus. The offending code is: ;; This function used to be an alias to `buffer-substring', except ;; that FSF Emacs 20.4 added a BUFFER argument in an incompatible way. ;; The new FSF's semantics makes more sense, but we try to support ;; both for backward compatibility. (defun buffer-string (&optional buffer old-end old-buffer) "Return the contents of the current buffer as a string. If narrowing is in effect, this function returns only the visible part of the buffer. If BUFFER is specified, the contents of that buffer are returned. The arguments OLD-END and OLD-BUFFER are supported for backward compatibility with pre-21.2 XEmacsen times when arguments to this function were (buffer-string &optional START END BUFFER)." (if (or (null buffer) (bufferp buffer) (stringp buffer)) ;; The new way (buffer-substring nil nil buffer) ;; The old way (buffer-substring buffer old-end old-buffer))) I think this would be better written as: (cond ((or (stringp buffer) (bufferp buffer)) ;; most definitely the new way (buffer-substring nil nil buffer)) ((or (stringp old-buffer) (bufferp old-buffer) (natnump buffer) (natnump old-end)) ;; definitely the old way (buffer-substring buffer old-end old-buffer)) (t ;; probably the old way (buffer-substring buffer old-end old-buffer))) Might be a little more robust and preserve the old behaviour in the 'nil nil buff' case. -bp