Re: Feeling lost without tabs

[Yuri Khan]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:09 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

>> To switch buffers efficiently, I need a visual representation of their
>> relative order
>
> AFAIK, each frame orders the buffers separately, so I don't see why
> you would have a problem here.

The problem here is that I need to see the list before I start pressing keys.

The workflow with tabbar is: eyes see tabs, fingers repeatedly press
M-S-<right>, eyes confirm that the desired tab is highlighted, fingers
stop pressing keys. With buffer-list, it is similar except the list is
more verbose.

The workflow with C-x b is: fingers press C-x b, eyes see the default
next buffer, brain tests if that’s the right one. It’s not, A: so
fingers press <down>, eyes read the next buffer name, brain tests if
that’s the right one, if not, repeat from A:. Finally, fingers press
RET.

The cognitive load (roughly, the number of eyes-brain-fingers
roundtrips) is much worse in the second case as the operations cannot
be done concurrently.