The Hidden Value of Emacs’ Tab Bar

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4HO8or08HUGUzA0w8Tagw

Today we’re going to work on customizing Emacs’ tab-bar-mode to see if it can be used as a replacement for other workspace packages like Perspective.el.

Lots of new things have been added for it in Emacs 28, so let’s try it out!

The Plan

• Customizing tab display to show selection better (font, color, emoji?)
• Experiment with tab groups
• Setting the tab-bar-format, a better status panel?
• Open project.el projects in new tabs
• Writing a function to show only desired buffers for a given tab
• Does it work with desktop-save-mode?

Using tab-bar solely as a global mode line: http://ruzkuku.com/texts/emacs-global.html

;; Inherit the face of `doom-modeline-panel` for better appearance
(set-face-attribute 'tab-bar-tab nil :inherit 'doom-modeline-panel :foreground nil :background nil)

;; Totally customize the format of the tab bar name
(defun my/tab-bar-format (tab i)
  (propertize
   (format
    (concat
      (if (eq (car tab) 'current-tab)
          "🔥 " "")
      "%s")
    (alist-get 'name tab))
   'face (list (append
                  '(:foreground "#FFFFFF")
                  (if (eq (car tab) 'current-tab)
                      '(:box t)
                      '())))))

;; Replace the default tab bar function
(setq tab-bar-tab-name-format-function #'my/tab-bar-format)

(defun my/tab-bar-tab-name-function ()
  (let ((project (project-current)))
    (if project
        (project-root project)
        (tab-bar-tab-name-current))))

(setq tab-bar-tab-name-function #'my/tab-bar-tab-name-function)

;; Only show the tab bar if there are 2 or more tabs
(setq tab-bar-show 1)

(defun my/tab-bar-string () "HELLO")

;; Customize the tab bar format to add the global mode line string
(setq tab-bar-format '(tab-bar-format-tabs tab-bar-separator tab-bar-format-align-right tab-bar-format-global))

(add-to-list 'global-mode-string "HELLO")

;; Make sure mode line text in the tab bar can be read
(set-face-attribute 'tab-bar nil :foreground "#FFFFFF")

(defun my/project-create-tab ()
  (interactive)
  (tab-bar-new-tab)
  (magit-status))

(setq project-switch-commands #'my/project-create-tab)

(defun my/switch-to-tab-buffer ()
  (interactive)
  (if (project-current)
      (call-interactively #'project-switch-to-buffer)
    (call-interactively #'switch-to-buffer)))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x b") #'my/switch-to-tab-buffer)

;; Turn on tab bar mode after startup
(tab-bar-mode 1)

;; Save the desktop session
(desktop-save-mode 1)