Re: Separate area at the top for a serious tab bar

[R. Diez]

> [...]

> Though I understand the "positional orientation" idea.

This is a personal preference. Many people thrive in chaos. Other must have a 
tidy desktop. There is nothing wrong per se with each way.

A tabbar does not preclude other buffer switching methods. I often have many 
buffers open. But I tend to keep the "local context" (the tabs that are visible 
right now) sorted (.h left from .cpp and so on).

There is a tabbar in Firefox. There is one in most desktop environments 
(Windows, Xfce, KDE...). There will always be people and scenarios where a 
tabbar is the right approach, even in Emacs.

I would not underestimate this kind of usability matter. It may well be one of 
the biggest factors driving people away from Emacs. It could even be a 
necessary evil until most people learn to do away with the tabbar. Humans are 
just like that.


> [...]

> (BTW, those keys don't work in my FF.)

They are standard in Firefox:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly#w_windows-tabs

You are probably using a Linux desktop environment that is eating those key 
combinations. I had to tell mine to stop taking some key combinations for 
virtual desktop switching, which I personally do not use.



> That is indeed neat, but isn't it fragile?  It depends on you,
> the user, ordering the tabs.  This looks like something a computer could do.
> [...]

On the contrary. I am the user, and I rule. 8-) Automatic ordering here would 
not work. Sometimes, during testing, I keep seemingly-unrelated tabs next to 
each other. For example, a shell buffer next to the script I am testing right 
now, or the HTML page next to the C++ code that is generating it.


I do most of my buffer switching without even looking at the tabbar, with just 
1 or 2 quick keystrokes, because I intuitively know where the buffer I want is 
(2 steps left, or 1 step right). For a small group of related files, this 
positional hint works better (at least for me) than rotating over the 
last-visited buffers.


Best regards,
  rdiez