Re: Feeling lost without tabs

[Yuri Khan]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

>> You might want to have a look at tabbar-mode.
>
> That's one way.  Another one is to have separate frames dedicated to
> different projects/activities.  You switch to a frame when you need to
> get back to the project/activity specific to that frame.  Each frame
> in Emacs "prefers" the buffers used in that frame, so switching
> between buffers within a frame is likely to be easy, without mixing
> buffers from other frames.

How do *you* switch buffers preferred by the current frame?


In plain uncustomized Emacs, the ways of switching buffers are:

* C-x <left> and C-x <right>. For me, these conveniently work for up
to two buffers. After that, I start forgetting which way to each of
the buffers, and after three, it gets tedious just to repeat
keystrokes.
* C-x b, followed by typing a buffer name, possibly using completion.
This requires holding buffer names or at least their prefixes in one’s
head. Additionally, completion does not honor frame boundaries.
* C-x C-f with a file path/name of an existing buffer, assuming the
target is a file buffer. Roughly the same inconveniences as above.
* C-x C-b, followed by choosing a buffer from the list. This also
ignores frame boundaries and involves switching to an intermediate
buffer that occupies the whole window.


To switch buffers efficiently, I need a visual representation of their
relative order so that I can roughly estimate the number of times I
need to press a switching key combo; tabbar-mode gives me that
concisely and unobtrusively and, with a suitable grouping function,
also relevantly to the frame. (Alternatively, I could do with numbered
buffers with tabbar showing the numbers and Alt+[1-9] switching to the
indicated buffer.) I assume OP feels similarly.