Re: Too many editor tabs?

Ivan Soleimanipour <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.java.netbeans.user-interface
Message-ID <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:43:16 +0100
> From: David Strupl <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [nbui] Too many editor tabs?
> 
> 
> > In other words it will be hard for a user to in general predict which
> > view a file is in.
> 
> The point is that there should be only very few items permanently opened 

should be?
I question this assumption.

> > I asked my earlier question about opening a file to put a bpt because
> > I believe the user switches between activities, debugging vs something else,
> > and that it makes more sense to associate filse with an activity 
> > as opposed to what I'd claim is randomness.
> 
> It is not random: the distinction is quite clear:
> 
> 1. The user "opened" file
> 2. The IDE opened the file automagically
> 

To a _computer_ the with perfect memory the distinction is clear.

To a user, as I tried to illustrate with my sleeping user example,
the distinction isn't. 
	
If you take any given file and ask the question:

	In the lifetime of this IDE session was this file opened
	by me or by the debugger?
	
The answer can quite frequently be "yes (to both)". 
	
The distinction is based on "who opened it first" and that's a mental
load on the users memory that a good tool should not impose.
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