I was doing some prototyping today, and wanted to save four individual text buffers as a tabbed document. More specifically, I wanted to save the four buffers as a single file with four sections, and when reopened, have the four sections load into four separate buffers (tabs) in the editor.
Excel has had this feature for worksheets in a spreadsheet for years, browsers have had it for a year or two, but nothing for documents. Does that seem weird to anyone else? Because this isn't the first time I've wanted to do something like this.
If anyone's got an editor that'll do this (and Eclipse's ability to have open editors persist across a close/open cycle doesn't count – those are separate files), I'd love to hear it.
Edit: I'm talking about a editing program here that saves files to my hard disk, not any sort of web-based thing. I wasn't very clear on that point. I.e. Eclipse, TextPad, Emacs, etc.
> as a tabbed document
the hard bit. Tabbed documents as a UI is (relativly) new thing.
> save the four buffers as a single file with four sections, and when re-opened, have the four sections load into four separate buffers
if all else fails there's MSWord with 4 sections/chapers and split screen….
the app I was working on would be able to do it with it's tabbed DHTML layout and four rich text editors as controls (added as custom tags) but that's CF, database, web app stuff. don't go there.
How advanced is the RTF editor in FLEX? knock up a (desktop) Flash app and save the content to binary files like old VB apps? You've got Tabbed controls already, file I/O….hey, you've given me an idea for a FLEX project for that competition…
Hi Barney,
This isn't too hard with a multi-page editor in Eclipse.
There aren't enough details in the blog post to give me any idea why you want it, or what environment you're talking about here.
You could also easily write a client server solution with Flex 2 and {insert server of choice}.
Basically there are about a million ways to achieve what you want, but without further details it's hard to say anything really helpful.
Spike
Microsoft has a solution for this on both the pc and the mac. On the pc it comes in the form of OneNote. On the mac it is Word in Notebook mode.
Both of these will let you save the files with the tabs as a single file.
As for non-M$ or a linux solution for you I have nothing for you :)
More response than I expected. ;)
Today I was using GEdit (GNOME's version of Notepad, but way better), and it's also come up with Emacs (where you have buffers, instead of GEdit's tabs).
Sim,
Tthe OneNote solution sounds pretty close to what I'm looking for, but as indicated, doesn't help me much on my Linux workstation.
Spike,
If you've used Firefox's TabMix Plus and it's saved sessions, that's kind of similar to what I'm looking for. Here's a rundown of workflow:
Create new document
Add some text
Create a new tab
Add some text
Save the multi-tab document
Then when I come back and reopen the document, I'd want to see my two tabs come back, with the appropriate text in each.
It's really no different than having a multi-section document with a "normal" editor, except I'd like the UI to treat each section as a tab, so I can easily switch between them.
That provide a little better info?
Hi Barney,
That gives me a little more information.
You could create a plugin for Eclipse to do what you want pretty easily. I think there's multi-page editor example in the "New Plugin Wizard", so that would get you at least part of the way there.
Just not too sure if that's what you actually want.
Spike
You can check this CF solution.
http://www.olimpo.ch/tmt/tag/tabs/