Re: Gtk tabs in emacs, new branch.

[David De La Harpe Golden]

Juri Linkov wrote:
> > > I think the `gtk-tabs' branch should do something like that.
> > Something like what?  Switching window configurations or used for anything?
>
> I see two separate tasks here:
>
> 1. Using Gtk-tabs at the top the the frame to switch window configurations.
> This is like tabs in web browsers and "perspectives" in Eclipse.
>
> 2. Using Gtk-tabs in subwindows to bind mode-specific actions to tabs.
> This is like tabs above a subwindow in Eclipse that would allow
> Emacs packages to create tabs above the window along with the header line.


Mode specific actions to tabs?

I do get a certain impression that people who propose 
non-switch-pane-of-content uses for tabs are really looking for just 
more toolbars - rows of buttons. NOT tabs, which have specific ui 
affordances towards being "for" managing stacked panes of content, and 
often the same panes that may also be tiled (like emacs).

And emacs has panes of content - windows...

Cnsider the GIMP's tab docks - You can have a layers window, channels 
window and paths window (not the gimp terminology, they actually call 
each window a "tab") docked into a tab group or a  brushes window, 
layers window and palette window.  Or whatever.  And rearrange them as 
you see fit.

[What's more, in contrast to ancient and quirky motif notebooks which 
used tabs like the index cards in a rolodex, not necessarily attached to 
every pane of content in the stack, in a splendid example of overly 
literal real-world analogy, modern guis have pretty much settled on that 
being 1:1]


Having said that, it would be possible to have both - my interwindow 
tabs as an interface for managing the window split 3rd axis, and further 
intrawindow tabs associated with a single window like a modeline, that
could either be mode-specific and presumably handled with callbacks to 
the mode code, or for what I strongly suspect people given such a 
callback api would end up wheel-reinventing repeatedly: a kind of 
narrowing the mode could initiate, with sections of the whole buffer 
narrowed to the different tabs.