Re: Tabbed buffers

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> I think the most natural thing is for tabs to exist just within a
> frame, and for each tab to have a window configuration.  Thus,
> switching to another tab would select its window configuraton.
> This is natural and already implemented.

That would be easy to implement, and I agree it would be insanely great
for many uses (especially if there are convenient key bindings for
moving to adjacent tabs) -- I'd _love_ to have a "Gnus" tab, and a "Gdb"
tab!

However that system would seem to essentially require making a tab to be
an explicit user action, somewhat heavyweight.

In many other systems, on the other hand, tabs are more lightweight, and
essentially represent different buffers; making a new "buffer" (in some
other app) automatically creates a new tab, so the user can easily see
what buffers/files he's created, and move among them.

I suspect this latter style of usage is what most people mean when they
say they wish Emacs supported tabs, and they might be disappointed to
see some other meaning of the term.

Such "buffer switching" usage _could_ work with your implementation, if
Emacs sticks to one window per frame, though -- and maybe users used to
that style would even _like_ one window per frame -- so maybe a
combination of settings could make everything work nicely in that case,
e.g., having the tab title default to the [first/only?] buffer name, and
configuring emacs to always create new tabs instead of new windows...?

-Miles

-- 
[|nurgle|]  ddt- demonic? so quake will have an evil kinda setting? one that
            will  make every christian in the world foamm at the mouth?
[iddt]      nurg, that's the goal