History Navigation Proposal by Alexander

[Jakob Petsovits]

On Sunday, 10. June 2007, Matt Rogers wrote:
> On Jun 10, 2007, at 9:23 AM, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > on behalf of Alexander I present his proposals for history
> > navigation in
> > Kdevelop4:
> >
> > The Task
> > -------------
> > Let's imagine we have KDevelop with two split views. In each view
> > user opened several files. Current state of the screen is:
> > ---------------------------
> >
> > |  file3.cpp |  file4.cpp |
> >
> > ---------------------------
> >
> > Files previously opened in views are:
> >   left view:    | right view:
> >   1. file1.cpp  | 2. file2.cpp
> >   3. file3.cpp  | 4. file4.cpp
> >
> > Numbers near the filenames indicate the order in which user opened
> > the files.
> > This means the user:
> >  opened file1.cpp
> >  split the screen and opened file2.cpp
> >  got back to the first view and opened file3.cpp
> >  switched to the last view and opened file4.cpp
> > Currently focus is in file4.cpp editor.
> > Also let's assume Alt-Up/Down keys traverse the history Back/Forward
> >
> > Proposals
> > ----------------
> > v.1 In-View History Navigation
> >    Back: show file2.cpp
> >    Forward: show file4.cpp
> > v.2 Global History Navigation With Switching
> >    Back: switch to left view + focus file3.cpp
> >    Back: switch to right view + show file2.cpp
> >    Back: switch to left view + show file1.cpp
> >    Forward: switch to right view + focus file2.cpp
> >    Forward: switch to left view + show file3.cpp
> >    Forward: switch to right view + show file4.cpp
> > v.3 Global In-View History Navigation
> >    Back: show file3.cpp
> >    Back: show file2.cpp
> >    Back: show file1.cpp
> >    Forward: show file2.cpp
> >    Forward: show file3.cpp
> >    Forward: show file4.cpp
> >
> > Please comment.
> >
> > Andreas
>
> My vote is for v1. It's the simplest of the bunch and it's probably
> best if we keep things simple.

+1

What I find important is that
1. Files are shown in the order of prev/next switching, everywhere.
2. In the file listing, files in different views are separated, not mixed up.

How about taking a categorized list view like the one in Amarok's collection 
sidebar ("A", "B", "C", ...), categorizing the files per view 
("Left", "Right") and having a mixed v1/v2 mode:
v1 as long as there is a next (on Forward) or previous (on Back) file in the 
same view, and v2 (view/focus switch) when you have Next on the last item of 
a view.

Imho, that combines the graspability of v1 and the flexibility of v2.

Comments?