Well I dont think that I would ever need it either. But vs.net wouldnt
have had that feature for nothing. Ask any vc.net studio coders whether
they use Alt-W-w.
This has the relationship to an important limitation of then ability of
a person when dealing with increasingly big software: limited number of
"state" that can be remembered at a time.
When facing with coding features that encompass large amount of files,
and each files has hundreds of lines, and deeply stacked, I
unconsciously remember mental pictures of those codes, and what
filenames the codes are in, and imagine them as big continously bonded
stacks of codes. When I mentally "scroll" the code upward or downward, I
need to "implement" the "event" as switching to proper buffer (that's
why I got really mad when z-order buffer switching was taken out as it
hampers my "mental implementation"). This switching most likely do not
correlate with normal buffer order (using Ctrl+Pg Up/Dn) as the order
was decided by logical relation of the routine, not by the order of file
opening.
Tab bar also put mental burden to me since it means I have to exert
tasking effort to scan each tab's title one by one visually and have to
"mentally compare" to the "string" in my head (which kinda like database
query million rows without using index). Z-order switching helps alot
when having to "mental scroll" back and forth on a piece of "mentally
close" code which unfortunately placed in separate files. But
frequently, I have to "mental jump" to other piece of code that have not
been stacked in z-order and which filename I remember.
I could do Ctrl-O (open) then type the letters and hoping the windows
XP's filename autocomplete suggest the filename (and it takes a while),
and press Enter. But it doesnt help on keeping the cursor position at
the last place I had left previosly, and also doesn't work very easy on
files located on different directory, thus requires me to retrack the
position either by Ctrl-F (find) and Ctrl+Alt+i (inlinefind) (which only
works if the query is unique enough), or visually inspecting each line
until I found the portion that matches my "mental picture".
By keeping the file open, I could switch to it and it keeps its
position, or I can Ctrl-F2 (bookmark) it before i move to another line,
then press F2 to find my position again. Of course by the time you close
the file, cursor position and bookmarks had already gone.
When using buffer list, I could switch to specific buffer by telling the
filename, without having to totaly depended on visual inspection,
without leaving my keyboard (shortcut), and would impose less intrusion
to my "single processing" not-so-logical-and-easy-to-distract brain.
Piotr Fusik wrote:
how about implementing dialog window, filled with list of filename (no
full path) of the buffers, just like in Visual Studio .NET\'s Alt-W-W
(Window-Windows). It\'s pretty handy when you had this 50+ buffers opened
at a time,
I don't think anyone needs 50+ files open at the same time.
I have buffers=30 and never open more than ca. 15 files.
Most of time there are 3-6 files open, so it's easy to switch
between them using Tab Bar or Ctrl+Pg Up/Dn
(I don't think I've ever used the Buffers menu).
So, my advice is to open only files that you actually edit,
close them when you're done and use Ctrl+O or an external file
manager (where you can sort by date or file extension
and not only by filename).
I used Ctrl+W in Code-Genie (another good text editor,
unfortunately no longer supported I think) to select file windows
to be tiled (Code-Genie had a multi-document interface).
Of course, if there is a buffer list window in SciTE, I won't protest.
Piotr
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