xfce4-terminal patch

[Randy Chung]

edscott wrote:
>>* Adding tabs and moving through tabs have accel keys associated with 
>>them, which should make life a good deal easier.  No handy "jump to tab 
>>x" yet; would that sort of functionality be wanted?
> 
> This functionality would be quite useful, either from the menu or a
> popup with a list to choose from.
> 

Hmm alright.  Any idea for a good way to format the menu?

I could simply add it to the end of the current Tabs submenu, e.g.

Tabs
|
-> Rename, Previous, Next, Tab1, Tab2, Tab3, Tab4, etc.

Alternatively, I could do something like:

Tabs
|
-> Rename, Previous, Next, Jump to...

And then have the Jump to... be a submenu.

Of course, anything else that sounds reasonable would be considered :)


>>* Tabs can be relabeled.  While the tabs are hidden when there's only 
>>one tab, you can still relabel it and it'll show up when you add more tabs.
> 
> 
> An automatic renaming scheme would also be neat. This would work if the
> user does not do a manual rename. This could reflect things like,
> current working directory, current host (when a ssh is done), command
> being executed within the terminal (for panel launchers that use the "in
> terminal" flag).

The thought's occured to me to add something like that, but the problem 
I see with that is that the label has to be short enough so that you can 
fit a reasonable number of tabs in, but long enough to provide something 
close to useful information.  Of course, what constitutes "useful 
information" really depends on the way the terminal is being used.  For 
example, using the directory name would break in an instance where I 
have two terminals editing different files from the same directory 
(until I rename them myself).  Using a filename wouldn't necessarily 
work either, since I could be editing two files with the same name (e.g. 
~/dir1/configure.in and ~/dir2/configure.in).

The more information you add, such as host, directory, and filename 
would make each tab more unique, but it'd also add a lot to bloat.  The 
current default of generic names like Tab1, Tab2, Tab3, etc. let you 
distinguish between the different terminals readily enough when you only 
have short, quick tasks.  For example, I'll open the first tab and su to 
root, and open another tab to do regular work.  In that case, the 
generic names Tab1 and Tab2 are fine, since habit will soon drill in 
that Tab1 means root, and Tab2 means user.  For more involved work, such 
as a long coding session, manually renaming tabs seems like it'd be more 
efficient because you could use mnemonics that fit your world view best, 
which is something an automatic generator wouldn't be able to do well 
(while still remaining lightweight).

If someone can come up with an idea for a default label that's both 
compact and yet unique, though, I'll gladly update the code to reflect 
that.  Alternatively, if there's enough consensus that I'm on crack and 
putting all that data into a tab label isn't too much then I'll 
acquiesce to demand :)

> All in all, good work!
> 

Thank you!

> regards,
> 
> Edscott
> 

--

Randy