SUMMARY

Dear KDE/Dolphin developers,

Each tab in Dolphin is currently named after the viewed directory. While working/multitasking on complex workloads, I often find myself having 20-30 tabs open in Dolphin, many of which may have identical/similar names because of overlapping directory names. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to rapidly change between the desired tabs.

I have two suggestions for how this could be improved, while preserving my type of workflow:

1. Allow manual/automated text tagging of a tab:

In addition to showing only the current tab, it could have a separate text tag prepended allowing some arbitrary text label. Input could be offered after right-clicking the tab. Alternatively, dragging a directory name from the path field while in "Navigate" mode and dropping it onto the tab would put that name into the label field.

Instead of showing only:

-------
| dir |

The tab would show:

--------------
| label: dir |


A new tab opened while viewing the directory shown by a labeled tab would inherit the label.

Alternatively, paths could be pre-configured to automatically be associated with a label, such that all directories nested under that path get auto-labelled. This could be done in a setting similar to how paths are excluded from searches in Filelight. Alternatively, while configuring "Places" entry, there could be an option to allow the user to auto-label tabs.


2. Inherited colors for paths.

Allow the user to set arbitrary color schemes for different paths. As above, this could be controlled through a setting or while configuring a "Places" entry.

For directories nested under that entry, the tabs themselves could be colored accordingly, either fully, or with a bold line along the top of the tab or with a small box/circle/dot in the top left corner of the tab. Alternatively, the tab text field could be colored/underlined.


Issue that might need some thinking to resolve are how potentially overlapping settings are resolved, and also, whether labels derived from directory names should be "dead" or updated after a directory name is changed.

In any case, perhaps this could inspire some ideas for workflow management in Dolphin. Thanks for a great tool!