On Thursday 19 May 2016 07:50:32 deloptes wrote:
> Felmon Davis wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Lisi,
> "tab" is coming from the maps with tabs AFAIK - from the paper world. This
> is a normal process in language(s) to use the description of something old
> for something new with similar function.
> Some are horizontal, some are vertical.
> The relation between the tabulator button and the tab/folder is however not
> clear to me. And to me it is a mere convention that we use ALT+Tab to
> switch between application windows, CTRL+PgUp/PgDn to switch between tabs
> in firefox and Shift+right/left to switch between the konsole windows.
> However similar to the languages, if convention is already there, it is
> usually hard to change, because people get use to it.
> This given as argument, I see the option for Felix to change it himself ...
> there are many ways to do so.

I don't quite see why this is addressed to me by name.   It is not my 
argument!!!  :-/  I merely pointed out that one can produce a rational 
argument for up/down.  (I don't think, mind you, that rationality comes into 
it.)  

If Firefox is pitched against Konsole, I instinctively stick up for TDE 
against Mozilla.  And left-right is in fact more instinctive to me.  But one 
can produce a rational argument for up/down.

Lisi