Tab splitting

[philrz]

At the time this issue is being opened, Zui is at commit 61f25a1.

A community user recently inquired about tab splitting in a recent Slack thread. In their own words:

since I'm asking for wishlist stuff - tab splitting maybe? - I can probably just use a new instance lol
I would just want a way to do more zed queries without disturbing an existing query that I'm using
whether it's a load or cross checking something
I don't want to do any unfair comparisons but SQL server management studio - actually also dbeaver - has something like that - you can do horizontal and vertical query window splits

In fact, the same user expressed interest in this once before in another Slack thread back in July, 2022. 😄

how do we feel about split views? 😂 I have some side-by-side comparisons to do

The user recognized at the time that it's possible to get something close to this by just opening multiple windows and positioning them side-by-side. But since Zui has basic tabs support and due to how most browsers work nowadays, users are likely to keep looking for this functionality and appreciate it when it exists in Zui.

@jameskerr has already been thinking about this as a feature idea, so I'm just logging this issue as reminder since I don't see one already open. I guess it's implied in some of the wider ideas kicked around in #1844, so maybe when we sit down to design something it'd be worth reading over #1844 for inspiration, too.

[philrz]

A community zync user today requested functionality that I think also falls into this bucket of "tab splitting". In their own words:

This morning, while working with Zui-insider for data cleanup tasks, an idea struck me: could we detach tabs into a secondary screen? This feature would be very useful when comparing large datasets line by line. I realize this is yet another of my “two cents” ideas, and it might not be at the top of your priority list. Implementing this might not be straightforward, especially considering the information I found in the Electron documentation. However, it’s worth considering in the future for enhanced productivity!

Also, it seems like there's maybe multiple interpretations of what one means by "tab splitting", i.e., putting different tabs side-by-side in the same large window, or dragging a tab outside of the main window to place alongside an existing window. I asked this community zync user to express their preference between those two approaches and they said:

i vote for "dragging tabs outside of the main window", since that it would allow using Zed on multiple screens. Anyone working with only one screen nowadays ? 🙂