bug#37840: Missing in the Emacs manuals:

[martin rudalics]

> I set 'switch-to-buffer-obey-display-actions’ to t, so to a non-nil value!

My bad.  According to its doc-string

  If non-nil, `switch-to-buffer' runs `pop-to-buffer-same-window' instead.

it just pops to the buffer in the same window and even using
'inhibit-same-window' won't prevent it from doing that.  So in this
particular case you have to set 'menu-bar-select-buffer-function' to
'pop-to-buffer'.

As for the general case I wouldn't know.  Juri, how about a special
value say 'strict' for 'switch-to-buffer-obey-display-actions' that
simply makes it behave like 'pop-to-buffer'?  Or at least obey
'inhibit-same-window'?  Those hard-coded 'switch-to-buffer' instances
are really hard to get by.

martin