On Wed, 18 May 2016, Felix Miata wrote:

> Lisi Reisz composed on 2016-05-18 16:40 (UTC+0100):
>
>> Jan Stolarek composed on 2016-05-18 17:33 (UTC+0200):
>
>>> As for Ctrl+Up/Down for tab switching to me this is counter-intuitive. 
>>> Tabs
>>> are displayed horizontally. Using keys for vertical movement to switch
>>> between them does not make much sense to me.
>
> This is why an alternate tab switching option employed in other apps includes 
> the tab key.
>
> Did you ever use a real tab, such as sheets in a ring binder or pages in a 
> printed manual? Those tabs are each an extension of a layer constituted of 
> one or more pages. Even today, paper manuals often use pseudo-tabs, pages 
> with contrasting colors at different positions on pages' ends to correspond 
> to different chapters, e.g. my Magnavox DVR and Brother printer.
>
>> They are numbered 1,2,3,4 etc.  One usually regards numbers as going up and
>> down.
>
> Not so much that as the physics of real rather than virtual tabs. Yes, they 
> look like they are horizontal, but each real tab is attached to a layer. Each 
> can overlap one or more others, completely hiding them. One goes up and down 
> through anything that is layered, unless the whole layered stack is stood on 
> end, in which case movement within layers in the stack becomes fore and aft, 
> not side to side.

wow! people are really taking a metaphor very seriously! someone calls 
a bit of coding a 'tab' and that generates an argument about whether 
the coding should look like a book!

as I vaguely recall there were similar scholastic arguments about the 
metaphor of a 'desktop' or 'folders' and such.

these arguments are as difficult to settle as the dispute Swift 
recounts of the quarrel between the 'Big-endians' and 'Little-endians' 
in _Gulliver's Travels_! and that was causa belli!

(itself a parodic mirror of the dispute between 'Catholic' vs 
'Protestant' in Ireland, well of course this wasn't purely 
theological....)

say here's what we do: let's code 'tabs' so they go up and down the 
right or left side for the 'Up-endians' and so they go along the 
bottom or top for 'side-winders'!

I'm a 'side-winder' myself but will willingly concede the word 'tab' 
to the 'Up-endians' if they insist - what's in a name?

but my fellow side-winders will insist on their metaphysics: tabs are 
'really' left-right, after all some books have tabs at the top or 
bottom so....

f.

-- 
Felmon Davis

"Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
get more wax!!"