[TxMt] RC29-30-31 don't obey tab auto-close override

Andrew Hodgkinson ahodgkin at rowing.org.uk
Thu Sep 5 20:32:21 UTC 2019


I hope this is the correct place to post about this; the TextMate GitHub 
repo doesn't seem to let anyone add issues. This setting:

   defaults write com.macromates.TextMate.preview disableTabAutoClose 
-bool YES

...is being ignored by RC 29, 30 and 31 (if not earlier, I didn't try). 
The last "mainstream" release appears to be RC10, which works fine.

The setting is absolutely vital to me, so I'd really love to see this 
issue fixed. In the mean time I'll stick to RC10.

To be honest, I'm surprised it isn't the default. This is of course just 
a subjective opinion! For me, having tabs close and lose tab ordering 
and positioning is quite destructive to workflow, especially when 
working in projects with large numbers of files. I have to go scrolling 
up and down in the file browser trying to relocate something I'd opened 
for reference but has now closed again. The behaviour feels rather 
arbitrary / random too; the threshold depends on window dimensions, so 
it isn't very user-predictable. I never remember to right-click and 
choose "Sticky"; it's not something I've ever had to do in any other 
text editor or IDE, so it's just not in my muscle memory.

Has there been any consideration to using the current macOS system-wide 
tab bar instead? This "compresses" tabs when the tab bar gets full & 
automatically expands tabs towards the side of the tab bar most recently 
selected (at least in Finder or Safari, but maybe Apple implemented 
special subclasses and this isn't out-of-box Cocoa behaviour). If it's 
good enough for web browsers, where having very large numbers of tabs 
open is common, it's hopefully good enough for a text editor too. The 
"hide if overflowing" behaviour, if it were kept, could then become 
opt-in instead of opt-out. While other editors seem to be adopting 
Sublime's "temporary tab" approach, I've never been sure I like it; and 
going with the best-practice OS X core system approach has always felt 
like the TextMate ethos.

-- 
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find photos, software, music and more at my home site, Bandcamp and 
GitHub:
https://pond.org.uk / https://pondnz.bandcamp.com / 
https://github.com/pond


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