The idea is that this should be a thin vertical window that sits just to the side of an emacs session and allows for fast execution of some things. It is not intended to replace the keyboard! It just gives another option - if your hand is already on the mouse, use ebuttons. If not, use the keyboard. Or as you like it. The window can also be made horizontal (see below) but then not as many buttons will fit on the screen.
(if (equal window-system 'x)
(progn
(load "ebuttons")
(ebuttons)))
(define-key global-map "Xt" 'ebuttons)
in your .emacs file. This binds the command to the keystroke control-X t.
ebuttons.labelX: label
ebuttons.commandX: (emacs-command)
where X is any number from 0 to the number of possible buttons minus one. The upper limit is set in the Makefile and is 50 in the distribution. Label numbers may be omitted (i.e. you can define labels 1, 2 and 5, omitting 3 and 4). If you only define 3 buttons, only 3 will appear. Actually this is not entirely true, an extra button (the last button in the window) is added. It causes the ebuttons program to exit and is (usually) labelled Quit. You can change the name that appears on this button (if you wish) with:
ebuttons*Quit.label: your-label
in your resource file. Other resources that will have useful effects are
ebuttons*Command.borderWidth
ebuttons*Box.orientation
ebuttons*Box.hSpace
ebuttons*Box.vSpace
ebuttons.geometry
ebuttons*background
ebuttons*font
The orientation resource can be set to "horizontal" or "vertical" (the default). Look in the Resources file in the distribution for an example of settings for these resources. My preference is to have the ebuttons window take up as little space as possible, so I use a small font and leave no vertical or horizontal space between the command buttons.