buffer-substring vs. buffer-substring-no-properties

[Kevin Layer]

Can someone tell me if there is a way to make buffer-substring behave
like it used to, and prevent me from having to change a zillion
instances of buffer-substring to my-buffer-substring?  (I can't just
change them to buffer-substring-no-properties because I support
xemacs, too.)

That is, seeing a value returned from buffer-substring of

#("(def" 0 1 (fontified t) 1 4 (face font-lock-keyword-face fontified t))

instead of "(def" is freaking out the software I'm "porting" to emacs
21.

I really don't understand why buffer-substring wasn't left alone, and
a new function, buffer-substring-properties created to do what people
want.  (The vast majority (327 of 308) calls to buffer-substring in the
lisp/*.el files are to buffer-substring-no-properties.)  Sorry, but
this change has me more than a little cranky.

Kevin