The current defaults in the editors preference page result in an unbounded number of editors being open, which results in poor performance and memory usage after the user has viewed a large number of files. There are many operations in Eclipse which slow down linearly with respect to the number of open editors. This is a poor user experience.
I would like to propose that we change the defaults as follows:
- Close editors automatically will be enabled
- Number of editors before closing will be set to a higher constant (20).
- The behavior when all editors are dirty or pinned will be "Open new editor"
Raising the constant will make the change in default behavior less noticable to people who were familiar with the old behavior, and will also save the cursor position and editor state for a larger number of recent editors.
Further, I propose that we remove the option to "Prompt to save and reuse" from the UI since it doesn't seem to do anything useful. It's behavior is very similar to "Open new editor" except that it also interrupts the user with modal dialogs periodically. It's unlikely that many users select this intentionally if they understand what it does, but leaving the option in the UI just increases the probability of users selecting it by accident. We can keep the preference around for RCP apps which may be relying upon it, but I don't think we should expose it in the UI.
Thoughts?
- Stefan
