How to switch to a file that's already open in a Geany Project

[andy5995]

If I have a 100 files open in my project, is there a way to type in a few characters to find and switch to an open file?

[elextr]

That is standard functionality of the treeview in the document sidebar, type characters and the selection moves to the first match, and there is an entry showing what you typed at the bottom of the sidebar. Note this entry goes away and forgets what you typed after a short while or immediately on enter.

There is an unbound keybinding to switch to the document sidebar, so bind it to (for eg) F10 and you just type F10 filena enter enter or as much of the filename as you need to select it (first enter is to close the entry, second is to switch to the selected).

Also you may want to reduce the font and icon size of the documents sidebar using CSS so you fit more in Tools->Configuration Files->geany.css add:

#treeview6 { font-size: 8pt; -gtk-icon-transform: scale(0.75); }

save and restart Geany. Unfortunately there seems to be a minimum row height, that may be set by my distro or more experimentation needed.

[elextr]

AFAIK all notebook tab manipulation is inside Geany. I suppose pin could be useful, but one has to ask, "if those documents are so important, why are the other 100 open?" ;-)

[andy5995]

@elextr So I can search through them if I need to work on patch that only involves 3 or 4 files. And because I usually have all the files associated with a project open. I don't create Geany project files for each patch. Is there a more efficient way for me to use Geany?

[andy5995]

AFAIK all notebook tab manipulation is inside Geany.

Does that mean a plugin involving tabs can't be done?

[elextr]

And because I usually have all the files associated with a project open. I don't create Geany project files for each patch. Is there a more efficient way for me to use Geany?

Well, close the project while you make the patch, you should not need a project for that, remember Geany "projects" are pretty much just a named session file, only a few settings can be changed per project, and the files will all come back when you re-open the project.

If the patch needs unusual build commands add extra ones and save them in your user configuration, see the fine manual and my humble self's wiki article on the build system.

Thats not to say this is a perfect solution, but its available now.

Does that mean a plugin involving tabs can't be done?

It would need careful analysis:

1. is sufficient manipulation capability available from GTK (AFAIK it has no pin, but I'm no expert) and is it visible in the plugin API
2. will Geany just override anything the plugin does, it doesn't know about plugins so it has no reason not to behave in its normal way and ignore any pinning.

[andy5995]

@elextr I started working on it in geany/geany-plugins#1308 AFAIK Geany won't override anything the plugin does.

[b4n]

FWIW, shameless publicity stunt: you can also give Commander plugin a spin 😉

The documentation is a bit scarce, and @elextr will rightfully lecture me about it, but basically it allows looking up actions (basically menu entries) and open files by fuzzy matching.

[elextr]

fuzzy matching

What, no AI, needs a backend to Github Copilot 😉

[andy5995]

FWIW, shameless publicity stunt: you can also give Commander plugin a spin 😉

The documentation is a bit scarce, and @elextr will rightfully lecture me about it, but basically it allows looking up actions (basically menu entries) and open files by fuzzy matching.

@b4n I've enabled it. I'll let you know if I have any questions. In the meantime, could you write a document here on how to use it? ;)