tablens.nvim

Note

A Telescope picker for managing tab pages.

Important

If you want to help add support for other pickers, check the contributing guide

• Snacks

Setup

The default config looks like this:

require("tablens").setup {
  highlighting = {
    index = "Special",
    path = nil,
    current = "Function",
    win_count = "Comment",
  },
  keymaps = {
    entry_move_down = "<c-j>",
    entry_move_up = "<c-k>",
    entry_delete = "<c-d>",
    open_picker = "<Leader>ft"
  }
}

Installation

lazy.nvim

{
    '45Hnri/tablens.nvim',
    opts = {},
    dependencies = {
        'nvim-lua/plenary.nvim',
        'nvim-telescope/telescope-symbols.nvim',
        'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim',
    }
}

But why would you even use tabs

This is a long one and reading it will most likely be a waste of your time

While initially learning about (Neo)vim I was told that tab pages play a different role than in other tools (e.g. browsers or code editors).

In a browser you would open a new tab every time you'd want another page open in parallel. Meanwhile Vim has the following design for handling files (:h windows.txt):

Summary: A buffer is the in-memory text of a file. A window is a viewport on a buffer. A tab page is a collection of windows.

So if you edit a file and switch to a second one, Vim will still have the previous file loaded in a buffer. Therefore you don't need to open a tab page for every file you want to work with. Your cursor position, undo list or unwritten changes are persisted.

Here is where it gets speculative: Since this behavior isn't obvious for beginners, Vim might shield them from overusing tab pages. I think there is also subtle hints of this in the design of Vim:

1. There is no motion to just open a new tab (see the window motions)
   • There is however <C-w>T for moving the current window from a split view to a new tab (this requires at least 2 windows in one tab page)
   • So you spamming tabs would require you to type :tabe by default, which isn't super handy
2. The tabline comes with a X symbol for closing the current tab in the corner, which is to be clicked
   • This cannot be disabled easily (the docs say disabling the mouse support removes this but it doesn't)
   • As a result it feels like a feature targeting newcomers

As a result of them not being as intuitive as other features, some might never use them.

I got inspired to use Vim by seeing @ThePrimeTimeagen and I started my config and therefore workflow following his example. In that workflow he solved a common issue: Working with multiple files at once.

Normally this requires you to either:

1. Move through them sequentially using :bn / :bp or [b / ]b (newer addition)
2. (Fuzzy) finding them directly with :find or a plugin like Telescope
3. Picking them from custom quickfix list

All of which require more than one interaction with your keyboard.

You could also use global marks (which I also tried for quite a bit) but they come with some issues:

1. Numbers are reserved for being set by a shadafile
2. They're not session based, so have fun switching projects (there is a shadafile workaround)
3. You need to manually update their locations since they are line specific

So he wrote a plugin that is now a household staple of Neovim setups: Harpoon. This basically solves the problems of marks and gives you a nice picker via Telescope. Where you can move and delete them.

After seeing this video and an overall shift in the community to configs with minimal plugin usage, I wanted to see what plugins I really need for my workflow. For most there was a native alternative but eventually I came across Harpoon. Where I was surprised that it's use case still had no popular native solution.

This is when I revisited tabs. Mapping their indices to my number row allows me to access them directly like with Harpoon. You can also access them sequentially with gt and gT, move them with :tabm and view them with :tabs.

The only thing I am not happy with is the tabline. So I wrote this plugin to just have a simple picker with some Harpoon-like management.

This is really just a custom picker for Telescope for some QOL. You can totally go without and have a good time.