Re: Tab bar

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

Juri Linkov wrote:

> We already have a suitable infrastructure of graphical primitives to
> implement a tab bar on top of it.  It is required to have graphical
> areas attached to window edges that can contain a row of bitmaps
> bound to some commands.  This functionality is already supported by the
> header line and window fringes.  It seems what we need is to improve
> them to attach arbitrary number of header lines and fringes to a window,
> and to render text (tab names) using specified fonts on these
> graphical elements.

however, toolkits like gtk+ do have tab widgets, like they have tool
bars and scroll bars - shouldn't they be usable, akin to "toolkit scroll
bars" and "toolkit tool bars" and "toolkit menu bars" in emacs?

> 
> I think tab bars are popular because they contain only elements of the
> current program without stuff from other programs in their lists.
> 

Trying to understand that, at least re tabbed wm vs.
intraprogram-implemented tabbing  - are you suggesting the
window-attached tab bars in a tabbed wm *would* have stuff from other
programs in their lists? Now, granted they _could_, but typically,other
applications' windows would have to be manually dragged into the tabbed
window, whereas new windows from existing applications could e.g.
default to the tabbed window their last window went into.

(just screenshots of windows with multiple tabs under a couple of
tabbed window managers, no I'm not doing it ascii art, sorry).
http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/pwm/screenshots/pwm-3.jpg
http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php