Re: Two GTK related feature requests

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>]

    * "Tabbed editing".  People using modern web browsers will know what I
      mean.  It is very addictive.  Essentially it would add buttons at
      the top of the Emacs window, one button for each buffer.  Clicking
      on one button will change focus to that buffer.  ...

To try this out, I am using tabbar.el from

    http://unc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/emhacks/tabbar-1.3.tar.gz

The user interface created by tabbar.el does not scale.

Right now I have 41 open buffers, which is fewer than usual.  To see
the various groups of files, I need a window width of 125 characters

To see the file names in just the `text' group, I need a window that
is 147 characters wide.  My normal window width is the conventional 80
characters.

The `tabbed editing' notion is interesting but I am not sure that any
of the obvious solutions work in the long run.  For example, one could
fill the tab line when needed, so that characters to the right of the
fill-column are moved down to another line.  But this suggestion uses
up screen real estate.

Newbies will say that they never keep more than a dozen buffers open
at once and that the current method will work for them -- but it is
awkward to design features that work for newbies and fail as the
newbies become more expert.

A vertical list is a possibility.  That is what `list-buffers'
provides, as does clicking on the `Buffers' item in the menu bar.

Unfortunately, even now, with only 41 open buffers, my menu bar
`Buffers' list runs out the bottom of the screen (it has a little
arrow at the bottom) -- this makes this feature less convenient than
the buffer list provided by buff-menu.el.

In windows, such as X, perhaps the names could be put in another
frame, like speedbar does.  However, speedbar does not scale well
either -- not for my directories -- but might work on a `tabbed'
buffer list, since the number of open buffers is likely to be smaller
than the number of files in a directory.  (For example, in one
directory right now I have 2361 personal `how-to-*' files, including
backups, but as I said, only 41 open buffers.)  Because it does not
scale, I do not use speedbar; consequently, I do not know the
advantages or disadvantages of this possibility.

--
    Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.teak.cc                             bob@rattlesnake.com