Re: close button on terminal tabs

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 15:42, Evan Martin wrote:
> Is there a good argument why tabbing shouldn't be handled by the window
> manager?[1]  

In my opinion, having written a window manager and large bits of
toolkit, it is not really feasible. Or at least the effort far exceeds
the gains.

But it's open source and anyone is welcome to prove me wrong. ;-)

> The arguments against it that I can see revolve around the fact that
> applications wouldn't be aware of tabs:
>  - Can't save things like "tab state"-- some web browsers use it.
>  - Some applications might have behavior that is tab-specific-- I think
>    the "location" box in firebird does weird things because it isn't
>    completely per-window.

Here is my view, someone save a link to the archives:

 - tabs don't currently include the toolbar and menubar, presumably a 
   WM-based solution they would have to, or WMs would have to manage
   subwindows of apps
 - none of the major apps will be willing to rely on a complex spec 
   only implemented in recent WMs
 - it's a nightmare to implement in both toolkit and WM
 - it significantly limits flexibility if you enshrine how tabs work 
   in a protocol
 - seems like the main value of tabs is that they require less 
   micromanagement than windows. but in 
   http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php
   it looks like they require more. to me the point is that 
   my browser just handles the tabs automatically. (Well, I don't
   even use tabs, but if I did.) 

Maybe the main thing is:

 - there are tons of consistency issues between apps not using the 
   same toolkit/HIG anyway, why should we overengineer a solution to 
   this particular one

> [1] http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/pwm/
>     http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php

Those aren't the same thing as the tabs in gnome-terminal or the browser
today, I don't think. They enclose the whole window, not just each
"document", and they require manual management, they aren't just
automatic.

Havoc