Re: idea -> internal frames?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     XEmacs has had tabs for some time, and although I have found no use
>     for them myself, I don't mind them as an option.
> 
> Emacs has tabs too--many of my files have tab characters in them.
> Are you talking about some other kind of tabs?
> 
> If so, what are they?

A GUI metaphor that has been gaining popularity in the last few years.

Folders in an archive (I'm talking office furniture here) often have a
little tab sticking up, with a label indicating the content of the
folder.  Sometimes the tabs are organizaed so the tab on the first
folder is placed leftmost at the folder, the tab of the second folder
a little more to the right, and so forth, until the tab on last folder
is placed rightmost on the folder. This makes it possible to see the
tabs of all the folders at once, when you open the archive.

In GUI's this is typically used for organizing forms that contain too
much information to be shown at once.  Instead, the top of the form
contain a row of labels that visually resembles the tabs from paper
archives.  When pushing a tab, the associated data is presented below.
Visually, the selected tab will be presented as if it was frontmost in
the archive, partly shadowing the tabs behind.

In XEmacs, the tabs represent buffers.  The line just below the tool
bar contains tabs whose labels are the buffer names.  By pushing a tab,
the corresponding buffer is shown.