Tabs (was: Next pretest)

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

>> Tabs are also ready. For the console it's completely finished; for GTK I
>> have to make the latests modifications. For Lesstif and Athena I just found
>> some notebook widgets, and have to learn how to use them.
>
> Um. What sort of tabs?  Last time I tuned in (some time ago), people had
> very different ideas about how tabs should work.
>
> For my part, I presently have a half-formed notion they should be another
> dimension for emacs window splitting along with horizontal and vertical,
> and therefore an aspect of window configurations.  Notably, I don't have
> any working code though.

This is one of possible tab uses that requires window grouping functionality
and can help to implement Eclipse-like perspectives.

> Another option which I looked into at one stage was toplevel-only tabs that
> collected and switched between whole emacs frames. i.e. tabs "outside"
> frames.  The gtk+ notebook container widget model was particular suitable
> for that approach IIRC, as it was sort of emulating a tabbed window manager
> internal to gtk+, and gave you drag-drop and rearrangement for "free", but
> I eventually thought the window splitting model was more emacsy
> and general.

Such toplevel tabs are useful to implement webbrowser-like tabs
switching frames or window configurations.

> The one thing I really don't like is the idea of tabs-as-list-of-buffers -
> simply doesn't scale well to even my typical open buffer count (10s rather
> than 100s.), and is a waste of what could be a more versatile ui feature
> for the likes of IDE-type modes.

tabbar.el successfully implements the idea of using the tabbar
to switch buffers.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/