RE: Key binding M-g should really be goto-line autolearn=noversion=3.0.2 autolearn=no version=3.0.2

[Drew Adams]

    Example: How would students/designers use Emacs for PHP coding,
    where the remote site displays error messages and line numbers
    in a web page?

Not to distract you all from the burning issue of `M-g', but how about a
poor-man's compile buffer? If the target line number is already displayed in
Emacs somewhere, why bother to type it in to `goto-line'?

It wouldn't help with a Web page display, of course (unless the page were
viewed in Emacs), but it sounds from your use case as if it might be
generally useful to have a command that picks up the line-number from the
text at point (whenever that text can be parsed as a numeral) and does
`goto-line' in buffer `(other-buffer (current-buffer) t)'.

And it might be useful to have an equivalent mouse command: click a
displayed numeral to go to that line in the other buffer.

To be able to specify a different target buffer, you could use a prefix arg,
but you should not have to type anything (even RET) for must uses of the
command - the default target buffer should be what you want. IOW, no default
buffer-name with a prompt; just go to other-buffer.