On Jan 4, 2005, at 17:11, Wayne Larsen 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
Clearly this must be task-dependent. The distinction is not really open files for me but more like 'active' files.
For example, if I need to do the filtered file selector, then I create FileSelector.mm and FileSelector.h. It's called upon by the project controller (so ProjectController.mm needs one or more changes) and I'll use ToDo.txt as scratch-pad for ideas (and update ReleaseNotes_in.txt when I'm done).
So for the next hour or so, I'll have these 5 files “open” and forget about the rest of the project (which contains hundreds of files in a hierarchical structure).
So the tabs is a filtered view of the entire project for me.
[...] The spotlight filtered textfield is a very strong idea.
Yes, as implied above, I think I'll do this in a moment and unless problems arise, it's likely to be in b2.
The list of open files in the project drawer is partly planned for when re-doing the project drawer, since when introducing ftp there'll be distinct groups in the drawer (FTP Server, Folder Reference, Custom Grouping, etc.) and here smart folders should be a new item (where the criterion could be 'file is open/unsaved').
But the filtered file selector I'll be adding is likely to make this smart folder less of a desire.
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.
I'm not sure either about the grouping other than 'same basename', which currently is very useful for languages that have source/header pairs. Although it's more just being able to switch between the two with a hotkey, but in the future I think it would be nice to have them in the same tab.
At the risk of repeatedly banging the same drum, I also believe that working history is also a useful way to switch between files.
The tabs actually comes from working history. Initially each time a file was clicked, it would be added to the end of the history (like a browser), and one could use cmd-option left/right. The tabs just made the history visible, able to re-arrange items in the history, and removed the 'pop to front' when clicking already open files.