Re: Tabbed buffers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Richard Stallman writes:

 >     All I was pointing out was that if we introduce frame-level
 >     tabs, then it might make sense to treat the current
 >     "multiple-frames on a single tty" as tabs rather than as
 >     frames.
 > 
 > That seems like an unnecessary complication with no benefit.

The benefit is that the tabs provide a visual cue (which many users
will have experience with) of what alternatives are available via
`next-tab' or `pop-to-tab'.

I don't think it is a good idea to think of tabs per se as associated
with any given content class.  They are a UI component, like any other
widget such as toolbar or radio button box (each of which is very
similar to a tab and could be used to simulate a tab control).

I think Alan's idea of a frameset (possibly implemented as Stefan
describes, but this area is conceptually hairy since a frame is the
biggest object Emacs deals with so tabs have to be *in* the frame,
while from the users' point of view it *acts like* multiple frames) is
probably the best default use of tabs.  Users will understand it
immediately.  Some will hate it for stealing precious screen real
estate, so there must be a way to turn it off.  But users new to Emacs
or to multitty will find it a convenient way to learn about that
facility.