[OS X Emacs] Information about tabs in Aquamacs 1.4

[Robert Morelli]

David Reitter wrote:
> On 18 Jul 2008, at 02:05, Robert Morelli wrote:
>>
>> This needs to be thought out carefully, of course, but I think almost 
>> any scheme would be better than the current implementation
>> that has no customization. At a minimum, I think some kind of simple 
>> filtering is essential. For instance, I would be happy to have
>> the ability to suppress all buffers that start with *, except when 
>> you actually visit them.
>
>  Nathaniel's question remains: where are these buffers displayed in 
> not in the current window? In a new frame? In a new window within the 
> current frame?
I intended everything in my post only for the tab bar. I'm not proposing 
new ways to handle buffers.  (Though I wouldn't mind that either,
it's for a different discussion.) So, what I'm saying is that I'd like 
to filter which buffers have tabs, not which buffers are allowed to exist
in the current frame. There's already some kind of filtering on the tab 
bar, in that a buffer doesn't appear until it's visited.

As for what to do with the tab bar when you visit a buffer whose tab is 
filtered out, I'm saying I'd be happy with a scheme where such a
tab appears only when you're actually visiting the buffer. As soon as 
you visit a different buffer, the tab for a filtered out buffer disappears
from the tab bar.

This is actually analogous to how the recent files functionality works. 
You can filter which files are saved in the recent files list. I haven't
looked at this in a long time, but I know the default for XEmacs was 
terrible a few years ago. All kinds of junk files would clutter up
the recent files list, rendering it only marginally useful. I did 
extensive filtering to make it useful. (Then, I actually wrote my own 
replacement
for the recent-files package to get even more control.)

>> As it stands, most of the real estate on the tab bar is taken up by 
>> tabs for buffers generated by emacs, like *Messages*, *Completions*,
>> ... Each LaTeX file I'm editing has one or more such buffers 
>> associated with it ... I consider those at best marginally useful. 
>> Really, I'd
>> like to get rid of them.
>
> Apple-W removes the buffer and the tab.

Again, I'm only talking about tabs. These buffers are like cockroaches 
anyway. You can't stamp them all out. I'd like to get rid of the tab 
even if the buffer stays.

>> One idea would be to have a hierarchical structure imposed on the 
>> buffers and use that to do some reasonable filtering of what appears 
>> in the
>> tab bar. For instance, TeX output buffers would be subordinate to the 
>> associated LaTeX buffers you're actually editing. Generally, only top
>> level things should be the the tab bar. To get to a subordinate tab, 
>> you first choose it's top level ancestor. Then do something to drill 
>> down.
>
>
> How would this map onto the underlying API used by various packages, 
> i.e. pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer, bury-buffer and so on?
>

All you need is a policy for how the tab bar looks, given the buffer 
list and the current buffer. After a call to bury-buffer or whatever, 
the tab
bar should just reflect the new structure of the buffers. APIs for 
buffers and for tabs should be independent.