[Qt-creator] Tabbed Editor

[Michael Barth]

Hello!

I’m interested in adding support for a tab based editor for Qt Creator
either as an option or plugin. I’m aware that the FAQ says that a lack of
tabs is a deliberate design decision. I also know that tab plugins do
exist, but they’re a bit old, janky, and lack comfort features that most
IDEs have.

Some of those things like a lack of a right click context menu, middle
click closing of tabs, and actually reopening tabs based on the session are
things that I can do with just modifying an existing plugin. I’ve been
working on this.

However there are some things I can’t do because a decent chunk of the
editor manager code is behind non-exported private code like the
EditorWindow, EditorView, EditorArea, and etc. I believe I can create
splits/windows, but there’s no way I can see to keep track of where an
IEditor comes from or modify an editor window to give it its own tab bar.

Other IDEs use tabs as a way to split views or detach into new windows that
also have tabs that can also be split. This is something I can’t do through
a plugin because of the private code mentioned earlier.

So that leaves me with two options:

1: I can refactor some of the private editor manager code to be exposed so
that I can just leave this as a plugin that doesn’t get in the way of the
“no tabs” design decision.

2: I can work to re-implement the plugin natively into Qt Creator as an
optional, non-default behavior.

I just want to know if it’s okay to do one or the other or if this is
something that people are dead set against. I just want this to be a
feature that’s easily accessible to everyone.

Thank you for your time! First time using a mailing list, so go easy on me,
haha.
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