[RFC] KDev4 Ui

[Esben Mose Hansen]

On Wednesday 14 November 2007 16:00:52 Jens Dagerbo wrote:
> Why isn't the current Document List (or whatever it's called) enough?
> It actually scales and can additionally house many more actions than a
> dropdown list. (VCS actions, file actions, etc)

ever since using my first IDE I have wondered about this, too. Vertical lists 
of files seems much more scaleable. For that matter, I prefer tabs to be 
vertical stacking in most cases because

a) Screens seems to get wider and wider, but text still reads better at 
75chars/line
b) Scanning a list is sooo much easier than looking across
c) typically, the vertical stack fits 40 tabs easily. 

I feel that the horizontal tabwidget is only useful when you have very few 
tabs. E.g.a tab for debug, another for profiling, a third for hacking. A 
horizontal tab for each webpage/file is a not a good idea if you open many 
tabs... which I suspect many people do.

Switching files while editing is one of the most common task, especially in OO 
programming, and even more so in C++. While many here have stated that "3-4 
files max is reasonable, I frequently commit 10+ files --- simply because the 
OO solution involved a call to an pure virtual function, which was 
implemented in a number of subclasses. Or think of the times when you decide 
that *that* member has a horrible name, or a poor interface... and go and 
change it? 

As a final note:  *If* you want to use the horizontal tab bar, I'd suggest 
simply starting a second bar below the first one when the first bar runs 
full. Limit it to 5 bars, and you can at least scale tolerably.

Happy thoughts! :)

-- 
regards, Esben

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