Tab bar

[Toby]

Hello

I, like many others, find the "tabbed" metaphor of recent browsers and
other programs very intuitive and practical.

As such, I'd love to see a similar device implemented in screen, or to
do it myself.  But first I'd like to hear what you think about it.

My idea is to 'waste' one terminal line, either the top or bottom one,
to display an ordered list of window titles.  I would ideally waste one
line out of a 80x25 terminal, so as to have 80x24 inner windows, which
are still perfectly useable.

The line, or 'tab bar', would need some sort of visual attribute to
separate it from the other lines (I'm thinking of underlining, if the
tab bar is at line 0) and the current window title would be highlighted
as well (maybe bold or reverse video, configurable of course.)

Such a line would enable you to always have a clear idea of where the
various programs are.  If you, like me, use a couple of dedicated keys
to cycle between the windows, a tab bar would make that operation much
more self-explanatory.  (As a side note, on my keyboard I use F11 and
F12 for this purpose: bindkey -k F1 prev; bindkey -k F2 next.)

Comments?  Thoughts?

Is there a way of accomplishing it with the existing screen code?
(I must admit I don't understand a few of the more obscure features like
'hardstatus' well enough to see if they can be used to make a 'tab bar')


Toby