Community
Participate
Working Groups
EG (5/28/01 2:35:17 PM) The managment of multiple open editors is still a severe usability problem. A common practice is to do a close all editors periodically. There were several proposals for how to address this issue and I don't want to repeat them, but I'd like that this problem is reconsidered. NOTES:
I second this. (essential) An easy hot-key (e.g. NOT something so acrobatic as ctrl-F6) to toggle between editors in most-recently-used order (such as Windoes ALT-TAB). (nice) A way to "tear off" editor windows like is possible with other windows. Personally, I loved VAJ's class-browser with its own window, and it's own Taskbar (on win32) icon. That's how I did _all_ my editing.
This is a problem that we are working on now. Ctrl F6 was changed to switch editors as the Windows Alt+TAB and Ctrl F7 was added to switch views. A dialog was added to enable the user to manage all editors (Menu>Window>Switch Editor). From this dialog you can close, save, view recent closed editors and switch to any editor in any perspective. The concept of re-using editors as also added to the workbench. The preference "Number of open editors before reusing" is in the workbench preference page and once "N" editors are opened the oldest editor (in the activation order) is reused. A "Pin" button was added to the toolbar so the user can "PIN" a editor which will not be reused while pinned. This work is still in development but is already released in the 2.0 stream. Any feedback is appreciated. We think editor management is important and is difficult problem to solve and we would like to see any new idea from users. I was a VAJ user as well and used/loved the "VAJ's class-browser". I think you can get the same behavior by changing the preferences "Workbench->Open a new perspective in a new Window" and "Java->Open new type hierarchy inside the Hierarchy Perspective".
*** Bug 1829 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
How about using the shortcut CTRL-TAB instead of the "acrobatic :-)" ctrl-F6? That's at least the common shortcut under Ms-Windows for cycling subwindows of a program. Another idea according to the problem with the limited tab-area vs. many open editors: How about extending the tab area to multiline instead of a scrollable tab area? As used for example in Textpad (if according setting is activated). Or how about an extra "editor selector view" like the outline- or tasks- view? That kind of view could even provide the luxury of showing the komplete file path or the complete class name (including package) of all editor windows.
The editors dialog is similar to what you describe, but it's a dialog not a view. It also needs some work (table column widths are not persisted). We can't use Ctrl+Tab for cycling between editors since Ctrl+Tab is the standard key for cycling between controls in the tab order when Tab is taken (i.e. by the editor in this case). This gives access to the toolbars, which we need for accessibility requirements. I agree that Ctrl+F6 is awkward though.
Resolving as later. I don't think we will find (try to find) another accelerator for Ctrl+F6. The original problem was solved with the editors dialog, a close all saved action and the Ctrl+F6.
Reopen for investigation
Closing the report. Will discuss editor managment a bit more in the bug 22301. I don't think we will change Ctrl+F6 since we could not find something else but the user will be able to configure it once we implement the keybinding UI.
