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When I first started using emacs I wanted tabs. I actually almost started using gvim instead just because it has them (shudders). But before long I realised the
by cup-of-tea 9y ago
When I first started using emacs I wanted tabs. I actually almost started using gvim instead just because it has them (shudders). But before long I realised they are completely unnecessary. Why do I need to spend screen space on knowing what files I have open constantly? I don't. I only care when I'm actually ready to switch files, and ido makes that a breeze. Not only that, but I have hundreds of files open in emacs because I leave it running for weeks on end. I use something called midnight-mode to kill the idle ones but still have hundreds sometimes. How would tabs work?
- tomsthumb 9y agoI use tabs for managing multiple contexts, where each context is a set of open files. Some tabs might have four different files open at once.
- jpeloquin 9y agoUsing tabs as contexts sounds interesting. What do you use for this? TabBarMode (https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TabBarMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TabBarMode)?
- cup-of-tea 9y agoHow about opening multiple emacs frames and letting your window manager act as the "tabber"?
- tomsthumb 9y agoMixing the contexts of my text editing with the contexts of every other application running in my wm doesn’t sound like an improvement. Maybe if window managers were substantially better.
- vvillena 9y agoTabs are amazing for visual thinking. I use them as a shortlist of my mental workspace. As for Emacs, "open files" mean nothing for me as an end user. The editor could hide that feature away and I would still work in the same way. I just use projectile and neotree to switch to the file I want. And efficient as that may be, I still lack a visual cue of what I'm doing. Tabs do that job perfectly.
- dietr1ch 9y agoEven if you need the list, you don't need it constantly, only when you need to recap, where you could just hit `SPC b b` and get the list of buffers to see all the "tabs" you need, furthermore, that can show you way more information than what a single line of tabs could. Another thing to consider, how often do you need to look at the buffers, but not change to another buffer?
- confounded 9y agoMe too. I fought Emacs for a solid month trying to make it use tabs, and use browser/Sublime/VS style navigation behaviors. But Emacs eventually won, and I’m glad that it did. Searching for a buffer with a few keystrokes is way better than flipping linearly through a huge stack of arbitrarily-ordered tabs. (Plus, a minimal interface just looks cooler.)
- cassianoleal 9y ago"Searching for a buffer with a few keystrokes", like using the [Ctrl/Cmd-T + fuzzy filename search] shortcut all those editors implement natively?
- confounded 9y agoExactly.