bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Carlos Pita]

Hi all,

when one creates a new tab with C-x t 2 or C-x t n it gets the same name
than the current tab. One can rename it but sometimes it's just a quick
tab that isn't worth renaming, or perhaps it's just a different view to
the original content and one is happy with it having the same name than
the original tab, last but not least one might simply forget to rename
it. All these scenarios aren't properly supported by tab-switch (C-x t
RET) since it doesn't disambiguate entries before calling
completing-read, for example by appending a numeric suffix to dups, so
just a single representative of the homonyms set appears in the
list. OTOH tab-switcher offers to choose between identically named tabs,
but IMO it's not a very convenient UI (somewhat invasive and doesn't
integrate with ordinary minibuffer completion), it's not assigned to a
standard shortcut and it doesn't seem a good idea to me that functions
named tab-switch and tab-switcher offer different sets of tabs to pick
from.  Disambiguation may happen at the moment of tab creation or at the
moment of tab selection, but I think it must happen one way or another

Best regards,
Carlos

---

In GNU Emacs 29.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin20.6.0, NS appkit-2022.60 Version 11.6 (Build 20G165))
 of 2021-11-14 built on Carloss-MacBook-Pro.local
Repository revision: 370d4038c5a671d3b9e3a4d28d849948c1a96f53
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'Apple', version 10.3.2022
System Description:  macOS 11.6

Configured using:
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Configured features:
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Major mode: ELisp/d

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bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Juri Linkov]

> when one creates a new tab with C-x t 2 or C-x t n it gets the same name
> than the current tab. One can rename it but sometimes it's just a quick
> tab that isn't worth renaming, or perhaps it's just a different view to
> the original content and one is happy with it having the same name than
> the original tab, last but not least one might simply forget to rename
> it. All these scenarios aren't properly supported by tab-switch (C-x t
> RET) since it doesn't disambiguate entries before calling
> completing-read, for example by appending a numeric suffix to dups, so
> just a single representative of the homonyms set appears in the list.

How adding a numeric suffix in completions of tab-switch (C-x t RET)
could help to disambiguate the tabs?  If there will be such automatically
generated completions as "same-buffer<1>", "same-buffer<2>", "same-buffer<3>",
there is no way for users to distinguish these tabs.

Only manually renaming the tabs to names meaningful to the user
will help to disambiguate them, for example, renaming them to
"same-buffer<first-part>", "same-buffer<unfinished-reading>",
"same-buffer<will-read-later>", etc.

The package uniquify.el tries to solve this problem with some low degree
of success by trying to provide hints for disambiguating buffer names
by adding some parts of their directory names, for example:
"same-buffer<dir-name-1>", "same-buffer<dir-name-2>".  But no such thing
is possible for tab names.

> OTOH tab-switcher offers to choose between identically named tabs,
> but IMO it's not a very convenient UI (somewhat invasive and doesn't
> integrate with ordinary minibuffer completion), it's not assigned to a
> standard shortcut and it doesn't seem a good idea to me that functions

`tab-list' with new mode more like list-buffers is developed
in bug#38680 and bug#38624.

> named tab-switch and tab-switcher offer different sets of tabs to pick
> from.  Disambiguation may happen at the moment of tab creation or at the
> moment of tab selection, but I think it must happen one way or another

As you said this is a temporary situation before the user decides what
to do with the tab: either to visit another buffer that will automatically
rename the tab, or rename the tab manually, etc.  So it's a non-problem.

bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Carlos Pita]

Hi Juri,

> How adding a numeric suffix in completions of tab-switch (C-x t RET)
> could help to disambiguate the tabs?  If there will be such automatically
> generated completions as "same-buffer<1>", "same-buffer<2>", "same-buffer<3>",
> there is no way for users to distinguish these tabs.

Tabs are positional so the position can be used to disambiguate
choices. I would use it as a suffix but only where it helps
disambiguate options.

That said, I believe even "same-buffer<1>", "same-buffer<2>",
"same-buffer<3>" is preferable to nothing, first because it's the same
in tab-switcher, tabs are all named equal and it's only the position
that distinguishes them, adding a sequential number conveys the same
information than the position in the tab-switcher menu, so if that's
good for one case it's likely good for the other one as well, at least
as long as it doesn't make completion cumbersome, which is the case
when it's a suffix sparingly added; second, because as it is today one
gets the impression that tabs are missing, it can get pretty
confusing, more confusing than arbitrary suffixes I would say. Notice that I
don't use the tabbar (and I believe I'm not alone in that respect) so I rely
on the tab list to get an overall picture every now and then, sometimes to
figure out what tabs need renaming.

Best regards,
Carlos

bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Juri Linkov]

> Tabs are positional so the position can be used to disambiguate
> choices. I would use it as a suffix but only where it helps
> disambiguate options.

Tabs are positional only when the tab-bar is enabled and visible,
especially after customizing tab-bar-tab-hints to non-nil.

But the problem is that 'C-x t RET' is used mostly when the tab-bar
is disabled and not visible, so tabs are not positional in this case.

> That said, I believe even "same-buffer<1>", "same-buffer<2>",
> "same-buffer<3>" is preferable to nothing, first because it's the same
> in tab-switcher, tabs are all named equal and it's only the position
> that distinguishes them, adding a sequential number conveys the same
> information than the position in the tab-switcher menu, so if that's
> good for one case it's likely good for the other one as well, at least
> as long as it doesn't make completion cumbersome, which is the case
> when it's a suffix sparingly added; second, because as it is today one
> gets the impression that tabs are missing, it can get pretty
> confusing, more confusing than arbitrary suffixes I would say. Notice that I
> don't use the tabbar (and I believe I'm not alone in that respect) so I rely
> on the tab list to get an overall picture every now and then, sometimes to
> figure out what tabs need renaming.

If this problem exists for completions candidates of 'C-x t RET',
then we could add the suffix <N> to non-unique completion strings
with tab names here.

bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Carlos Pita]

Hi Juri,

> But the problem is that 'C-x t RET' is used mostly when the tab-bar
> is disabled and not visible, so tabs are not positional in this case.

But there still is the underlying order used by C-TAB/S-C-TAB, isn't it?

Depending on the configured completion framework C-x t RET will show
candidates in order or not, but the interpretation of the suffix as a
position seems relatively clear to me even in the unordered case, if
not anything else at least it's an indication that there are
additional tabs with the same name.

Best regards,
Carlos

bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Juri Linkov]

>> But the problem is that 'C-x t RET' is used mostly when the tab-bar
>> is disabled and not visible, so tabs are not positional in this case.
>
> But there still is the underlying order used by C-TAB/S-C-TAB, isn't it?

C-TAB/S-C-TAB keys are enabled only when tab-bar-mode is enabled.

> Depending on the configured completion framework C-x t RET will show
> candidates in order or not, but the interpretation of the suffix as a
> position seems relatively clear to me even in the unordered case, if
> not anything else at least it's an indication that there are
> additional tabs with the same name.

This could be implemented like below.  But it still messes the
text properties of the selected completion candidate,
even with using minibuffer-allow-text-properties,
so something is broken in the default completion framework.

diff --git a/lisp/tab-bar.el b/lisp/tab-bar.el
index 1a1d0b1ea5..0590b5fe7c 100644
--- a/lisp/tab-bar.el
+++ b/lisp/tab-bar.el
@@ -1198,13 +1198,24 @@ tab-bar-switch-to-tab
 to get the name of the most recently visited tab, the second
 most recent, and so on."
   (interactive
-   (let* ((recent-tabs (mapcar (lambda (tab)
-                                 (alist-get 'name tab))
-                               (tab-bar--tabs-recent))))
+   (let* ((names '()) (i 1)
+          (recent-tabs
+           (mapcar (lambda (tab)
+                     (let ((name (alist-get 'name tab)))
+                       (if (member name names)
+                           (setq name (format "%s<%s>" name i))
+                         (setq name (copy-sequence name))
+                         (push name names))
+                       (setq i (1+ i))
+                       (propertize name 'tab tab)))
+                   (tab-bar--tabs-recent)))
+          (minibuffer-allow-text-properties t))
      (list (completing-read (format-prompt "Switch to tab by name"
                                            (car recent-tabs))
                             recent-tabs nil nil nil nil recent-tabs))))
-  (tab-bar-select-tab (1+ (or (tab-bar--tab-index-by-name name) 0))))
+  (let ((tab (get-text-property 0 'tab name)))
+    (tab-bar-select-tab (1+ (or (and tab (tab-bar--tab-index tab))
+                                (tab-bar--tab-index-by-name name) 0)))))
 
 (defalias 'tab-bar-select-tab-by-name 'tab-bar-switch-to-tab)
 
-- 

bug#51935: 29.0.50; tab-switch hides identically named tabs

[Juri Linkov]

close 51935 29.0.50
thanks

> Depending on the configured completion framework C-x t RET will show
> candidates in order or not, but the interpretation of the suffix as a
> position seems relatively clear to me even in the unordered case, if
> not anything else at least it's an indication that there are
> additional tabs with the same name.

Actually, not only tab-bar-switch-to-tab has such function signature
that uses the argument NAME, but also other functions such as
tab-bar-close-tab-by-name and tab-bar-rename-tab-by-name.
All they expect a unique name of the tab.  There is no way
to distinguish tabs with the same name.  In practice,
this problem doesn't exist because in this case
the users just rename the tab to a unique name.

To make is more easy to rename the tab, I improved 'C-x t RET' in master
that now it creates a new tab when the provided tab name doesn't exist.
So instead of using 'C-x t 2' to create a new tab, you can use
'C-x t RET new-tab-name RET', exactly in the same way as
'C-x b new-buffer RET' can be used to create a new buffer.