I am a Software Developer, as, it seems, are most of the the TextPad community and I find myself invariably working with between 3 and 10 groups of related files. This happens for a variety of reasons such as working on Java code that involves multiple packages, or most often, working on a web app where I will have open a set each of Java, config, SQL, CSS, JS and HTML files at once, all from different directories.
Then, also, I often have a couple things going on at once giving rise to yet another collection of groups of open files.
Because TextPad lumps all the open files together in one long list in the document selector, I will have one editor open for each of the 3 to 10 groups of files. Sometimes there will be 20 or 30 files in each group.
I would really like to see (after Unicode support; ha ha, just had to plug that) the ability to have open sets of files grouped together somehow.
The way I would most prefer would be to use tabs (which for me currently have no utility at all, being for individual files, because there are always way to many; having the doc selector list on the side is way more useful), where each tab was a group of files each with it's own document selector. With keys assignable to hot switch the tabs (defaulting to ALT+n for 1 - 10 and and CTL+ALT+n for 11 to 20).
Alternatively, another way would be grouping in the document selector, with each group separately expandable or collapsible (otherwise the selector will be a rather unwieldy long list of a hundred or more files most days). Files belong to the group which was current when they are opened and we would need a simple means to start new group (named, of course), driven from the keyboard like everything else.
Having the groups able to be rearranged is very important, and automatically saving and restoring the set within the work-group would be very nice.
Otherwise, the very simplest implementation I can think of that would be useful, is to have the document selector group the files by the directory name, sorted by full path and showing as much as possible with the truncation ellipses at the start and the files indented a little underneath each directory. A similar implementation would be to automatically create a new tab for each distinct directory in which a file is opened (again each tab with it's own selector).
Most days, TextPad accounts for 1/2 the space on my taskbar (which is a column on the left side of a high resolution monitor with room enough for about 25 open applications). It sure would be nice to have only one TextPad open for all my coding. And no, Windows' task grouping is no use - I work with the keyboard, not a mouse, and Windows' task switching is just too clumsy - I mentally arrange tasks for higher level things.
The key thing would be to have a seamless and quick way to switch between file groups and to be able to have the list of groups in front of me all the time.
Open Multiple "Groups" of Files in One Instance of
Moderators: AmigoJack, bbadmin, helios, Bob Hansen, MudGuard
Most Agreed
Just to bump this up - I and hopefully more people can agree this would be an extremely useful enhancement, including the UniCode support =) The current Tab Groups are nice but I want full screen editing!
I would also add that an option to show just the containing folder and filename in the document selector would be useful. So the files in a selector could read:
modules/example.js
modules/default.js
The "full path" is typically too long...
I would also add that an option to show just the containing folder and filename in the document selector would be useful. So the files in a selector could read:
modules/example.js
modules/default.js
The "full path" is typically too long...