Open new file

Good morning,

I think that APN is always a "low level priority" so, I don't need to emphasize that here.

When we open a new file it always goes to the right end of the opened files list.
When the opened file is related to the file we are editing and that file is in the middle of the opened files list, it's not practical to handle both.
To put both files side-by-side we have to move one of them what, by itself, is also not easy.
Remark: Usually I have much more than 25 files opened

I could suggest a lot of options about handling the opened files list (e.g. add a button for "home/end", sort, etc...) but that meant changing the APN interface what, I suppose, is more difficult, no?

An alternative that would help me a lot is to open new files next to the current file instead of place it at the end of the list.
If that could not be the best option in some cases, maybe a two-step solution could solve it, adding an option to the context menu "move file to the end"?

I believe you have enough to do but, if this will not involve too much time and you need something to relax, I would appreciate the change.

Thank you

Coincidentally, I've been grumbling (to myself) about this same problem for the last few weeks too. (It's kind of funny that we lived for decades with the single-document interface of VUE, and then when we get an editor that can handle multiple documents, we end up opening so many that it's almost as much of a hassle to find the tab for the already-open document that we want, as it used to be to just start a new editing session. Or to put it in more universal terms, it's like the American ever-expanding house problem, or the ever-expanding freeway problem - we keep building them bigger and bigger to make room for our junk or our cars, but then we just put more junk and more cars in them until the problem is worse with the solution than it was without it.)

So, with tongue only partially in cheek, maybe the best solution is to limit the number of files that can be opened at once to whatever fits on the tab bar? (Then it becomes a hardware problem - if you want more open files, just get a wider screen. Of course that might require a bigger house....)

The two step solution already exists: just before opening a new file, drag the current file's tab to the end. (Yes, it takes a bit longer than a single click option, but maybe no longer than a context menu option would.) The problem in either case is you have to remember to do it before you open the new file. Otherwise, if you're like me, what happens is you open a new file, then want to go back to the one you were previously editing, but it's tab has scrolled off the left side of the tab bar, and there are now so many files on the tab bar that it's actually faster to use File > Open again to find it. Or to go all-out old-school, toggle to a dot prompt and use the APN filespec to reactivate its editing pane. Only then do I remember to drag it to the right edge to be next to the other file I just opened.)

In some cases you might be able to use the Ctrl-Alt-B after opening the new file to go back to the last file position, but that only works if you had done some kind of a jump operation that would have saved the position in the file you were previously editing. That suggests another possible approach, i.e. always save the current position before opening a new file so that Ctrl-Alt-B will take you back there. But that's still not going to be as convenient as getting all of the files you're working with to be next to each other on the tab bar. And that suggests yet another approach: automatically move the current file to the end of the tab list, so that the the most recently used files are all in sequence. Or yet another: automatically close files that haven't been given the focus after a period of time, or based on a maximum number of files deemed to be reasonable to keep open at a time.

The gumption trap for me is: how long will it take to implement one of these approaches, and then how long will it take for the new approach to recover the time invested? Or worse, to lure us into an even bigger mess? Maybe we just need to wait for the Marie Kondo video on how to keep your APN file list neat and tidy (presumably by closing any file that doesn't give you immediate joy.)

I knew you needed to talk, I just gave you a reason

Thank you!

And don't be bad mouthing VUE