Re: Re: question and/or enhancement suggestions for the IDEeditor/explorer

Hi Tim,
Thanks for your reply.  I have a couple comments:

Tim Boudreau wrote:
> Thomas Wolf wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Ever since the multi-tier tabs in the editor have been abandoned in 4.x,
>> I've been exclusively using the Explorer to open & jump between files in
>>  the editor (I frequently have several dozen files open and the
>> alphabetic drop-down on the top-right of the editor becomes
>> time-consuming to scan with that many files.)
> 
> 
> Is Ctrl-Tab at all helpful for this?  Also, have you tried Alt-Shift-O?

I'm one of those keyboard-shortcut challenged people: I seem to have a
very limited cache of <ctrl>,<alt>,etc. sequences I can remember :-(
<ctrl-tab> seems very useful but I doubt whether I'll use it - simply because
I'll forget the sequence after responding to your post...and so the speed
with which I can get access to recently opened files is totally negated by
the time I'll spend looking up the command again.
...<alt-shift-O>?  See above :-)


> Currently there's none;  Navigator does have an API for secondary 
> highlighting of things, and has some promise as an Explorer replacement.

I hope so because one of my comments about the Navigator is that it's more
clumsy than the drop-down it replaces (I know it shows/does alot more: if it's
up all the time, it uses alot of real estate for something that I only look at
occasionally (like going to a method or field.)  If I close it, then it takes
more work (remember, I'm not that great with keyboard shortcuts!) to get to it
again than it did to popup the old method drop-down.

...

>> - Is there a way to configure the editor to entirely remove the tab area
>> at the top?  Since I'm using the explorer exclusively, this is wasted
>> real estate.  Ideally, there'd be a checkbox like there is for the
>> toolbar.
...

> I'd say file an enhancement request, but I suspect that so few users have
> that usage pattern that writing a patch is probably the way to go if you're
> seriously interested.

...

> and write it - I understand your reasoning for wanting this, but tab-less
> tabs are pretty non-mainstream.


Hm, never thought of myself as non-mainstream :-)  But, seriously, I think
it's pretty normal/natural to want a way to graphically navigate all currently 
open files with a minimum of keystrokes, mouse-clicks, scrolling, searching.
Currently, it seems that all the mechanisms (and there are many) fall short in
one or more of these.  The Explorer-based navigation achieves all of these
aims, IMHO, except for scrolling - and that can be minimized by various minor
enhancements (e.g. package-name compression; selective collapsing/expansion
of packages/directory structures.)

I guess i'm suggesting that since tabs no longer show many open files (as
I speak, I have 21 files open, of which the tabs show 5) it's usefulness
as a navigation mechanism is greatly diminished.  Why even bother with it?


Cheers,
Tom