[TxMt] how do you close excess tabbed files?

[Wayne Larsen]

Since I've argued before that the tab bar is not effective for my style 
of working, I should add my support to some of these ideas.

>> On Jan 4, 2005, at 10:35 AM, Sam Andrews wrote:
>>
>> In my daily experience the one row of tabs (both in TextMate and 
>> Eclipse) just adds noise because you have just a handful of opened 
>> files there, whereas I tipically have a lot more. Because of that the 
>> tab selector is in fact useless most of the time, and the interface 
>> it enforces makes looking for an opened file not in the tabs 
>> something exceptional, I mean, it is not the default interface, the 
>> easy one, but it is the one I normally need.
>
This is my experience for my usage patterns.

On 4-Jan-05, at 5:28 AM, Xavier Noria wrote:
> If I think further I believe the distinction between opened files and 
> files in the project is artificial. It is a traditional distinction, 
> but tradition sometimes can be improved as iTunes did.

I agree with this.  I am amazed at (and impressed by!)  those of you 
who only work with several files at one time, and know that you are 
finished with a file and are able to close it.  Obviously I have far 
less foresight in my work patterns -- I don't want my editor to force 
me to have to manage these details.

I think there have been several excellent ideas proposed in this 
thread.  The spotlight filtered textfield is a very strong idea.  Emacs 
has a buffer search with  filename completion that provides much of 
this functionality.  As proposed in this thread with proper ui 
feedback, this would be very powerful.

Grouping related files into a single tab is an interesting idea, 
however, I'm not convinced that the effort to create and maintain these 
groups, and the ui required to differentiate between members of a tab 
group and shortcuts between them would make the idea really effective.

At the risk of repeatedly banging the same drum, I also believe that 
working history is also a useful way to switch between files.  Having a 
keyboard shortcut to page between files in the order they have been 
opened would allow one to quickly switch between files in a working set 
in an ad hoc fashion.

The most useful combination, imo then would be:
  * Project Drawer
  * History List
  * Spotlight Like filtered search

Whether you retain the tab bar as is, add a file list view, eliminate 
the tab bar completely, or some other proposal does not matter-- this 
would be a minor detail since that visual feedback provided by the tabs 
would not be necessary.

Regards,
Wayne