Display all open files (across panes) in tab switcher (vim buffers-lite)

[baldwindavid]

In vim there is the concept of the buffer that lives a life of it's own decoupled from "windows" ("panes" in Zed) and "tabs" (tabs are different in Zed). The Zed paradigm is similar to VSCode and is probably not changing to be like Vim at this point and I'm NOT suggesting a change to that. What I would like is to be able to use the tab switcher, hide tabs, and interact with files in a similar way to buffers. I think we could achieve that with a tweak to the tab switcher.

I currently use the tab switcher and, while I'd like to hide tabs, have felt the need to keep an eye on them because tabs are confined to panes so I have to know where they are. What I'd really like is for the tab switcher to display ALL open files, regardless of which pane they're in, rather than just those in the current pane. If you were to select a file from the switcher that happens to be open in a different pane, that's fine, go ahead and open it in this pane too. If you then close that tab for the file in this pane, it would still be open in the other pane and show up in the switcher. If you close the tab in both panes then it would no longer appear in the tab switcher.

Considerations

• The tab switcher also works in the Terminal and Assistant panels, but what is being suggested here would be limited to files in the "center" panel.
• Terminals might be open in the center panel and those probably need to be treated differently than files; seems like it would be strange to be able to have the same independently scrollable terminal open in two panes with mirrored behavior. Thus, thinking that selecting a Terminal instance from the tab switcher would make that instance effectively switch to whichever pane it's being selected from and displayed in that pane.
• This point about Terminals begs the question "why not have files act the same and just switch to whichever pane it's requested?". The reason is that it is common to want a file open in multiple panes where you're looking at one part of the file in one pane while editing it in the other.

Additional Notes

• This came up in discussion in the vim-mode channel in Discord... https://discord.com/channels/869392257814519848/1212320652837789707/1338574529533841510

[Tebro]

My personal preference would be a "Open file finder", which works the same as the file_finder except it only lists open files, brilliant if it would be searchable as well.

I rarely use the tab switcher, if that route is selected then I probably will though.

As for terminals, I think they should be included in the (let's face it) "buffers list". At least I would prefer it that way, though I do understand the points about having them split would be rare, but finding them would be very useful.

[baldwindavid]

To be clear, I'm not suggesting Terminal instances wouldn't show in the tab switcher. I definitely want them there. It's just that I don't think you'd want a terminal instance that's running your server open in multiple panes with mirrored content. Instead I'm just thinking those would only be open in a single pane; whichever pane you've selected it from via the tab switcher.

[baldwindavid]

"Open file finder" would be cool too, but the mechanics are different. If I'm working with a bunch of open files at a time, I'd probably want to search via file names. And if I'm searching by file names it's the file_finder just limited to open files (which is not nothing).

However, if it's just a handful of files I prefer the tab switcher as it toggles back and forth between two files with just a modifier and key press. And navigating the list of files in the switcher is as easy as pressing the key again while the modifier is held. It's just a lot more streamlined workflow when you don't have many files you're working with.

[Tebro]

So having both would be nice, I agree.

[baldwindavid]

Yeah, for me the file finder already does exactly what I need when I have a lot of tabs since there's not much difference between searching for an open or unopened file. If I were working in projects with a lot of similar file names I'm guessing it would be more of a problem though.