Thanks - an interesting comment. My comments interspersed piecemeal while pondering it.
I use the sidebar because the tab bar can’t show large numbers of text files nearly as efficiently as a vertical bar (vertical shows 40-50 tabs on a screen + full \paths and scrolling shows more with ease, horizontal bar shows far fewer, paths usually cropped, and multiline tabbar has a cost of killing vertical space which is at more of a premium on most monitors). I can also remember where a file is in a list in moments, to point and right click, but recollecting “what was the name of the file I saw that had that snippet in it” takes quite a pause, often I don’t know, and it’s disruptive. With unfamiliar filenames (unknown log files and large folders to explore what’s going on in them), random filenames (install, temp and log files named by auto-random-filename OS calls), and scratch/temp files (all named identically), typing is less useful and point/click has the edge. With well known files it’s probably like you say, the other way round.
That’s the majority of the time. The files I’m using are rarely from a structure I know or created, most of the time, they’re “whatever files seem useful”.
[quote=“Roflhouse42”]Say you have a bunch of files:(this being a bad case because everything is names so similarly.)
toplevel\somefolder\foo\bar.h
toplevel\somefolder\foo\bar.cpp
…
Now fuzzy search wont work if you dont know what you are looking for. For those cases, which for me is rare cause if i dont know what im looking for why am i changing it, use the side bar and navigate to where you want to go. or hit ctrl+o and use the os navigation.[/quote]
I agree, if it’s ones own project and nice defined names. But as you say, it’s often not that way. If they have names like “error.log” or buried in a forest of similar folders and files like \Share\temp\mbb\YYYYMMDD\NNN\ae6b927f004-00.log, few people will remember the filename to type into a filename-based switcher panel isn’t likely to help. Ctrl-O or open in Explorer is fine, but once opened I’d like to be able to do actions like multiselect or file functions on that file, or define my own multifile actions, and not only if it’s in a folder I have also loaded.
I think one difference could be perspective, my work doesn’t usually involve well defined organised files or files I know quite well. The text files I’m looking at might be source html, log files of some issue I’m trying to figure out, a section of FOSS code that I’ve never seen before, and no idea what’s what in it and trying to get a handle what it’s doing because it might solve an issue I have, exported xml that it’s not clear if I need to keep or not, snippets that might fall into place or be worthless (and unknown which for a few hours), and so on. Type of contents are variable, filenames and file system locations also variable, much rough note taking and snipping, to review in an hour or so when I have understood more. With well-defined specific programming projects, text files are far more disciplined and one tends to know the filenames intimately, they are in one or a few clear locations (or SVN/GIT is used). For my workload, the same tools are crucial - folding, syntax highlighting, regex find/replace, hide/show lines, encoding, and the rest, but the assumption that the person editing text files knows filenames, or files should be expected to be in a cogent disciplined structure, falls down.
You’re right on the path being shown, I missed that, thanks.
[quote=“Roflhouse42”]Now for the monkey in the room. I literally cannot think of a single reason, time to ever, for any reason, have 20 scratch files open at a single time. That is by far the strangest thing another programmer has told me. i might open on scratch file a week.
To be the bad guy here, it sounds like ST isn’t really for you. I like sublime b\c i use the vim mode that it comes with. ST is a great editor for mouse-less programming. It really isn’t as strong for mouse center programming like a full IDE like visual studio. In my opinion mouse-less programming is much faster but it is a skill that is hard to get into.
TL;DR fuzzy search is the second best thing ever invented. and you should practice it if you think its not fast, and if you really need that many scratch files you might want to try as different editor. FYFY: Mutiple cursors paired with Ctrl+D is the best thing ever invented.[/quote]
Surely none of your post is a “bad guy” thing. Sane, solid, appropriate comment, and I appreciate the honesty. There are many text editors, many styles; I wouldn’t want to knock any program that works well for some, or expect one program to work for all.
The thing is, I’m not a programmer per se. My text editing is more about tool maintenance: applying general problem-solving skills to areas that aren’t my profession. While I’m a heavy text user and I have coded assembler, CLI php, and a bunch of others ad-hoc, I’m not developing on a project here. My focus is more making my tools work efficiently and adding capabilities I benefit from. Mostly if I code, it’s trying to fix an annoyance or compatibility issue in some software that I use daily, or a bug/issue that’s broken after some update cycle. I take the time out to bugfix/patch it, which is my way to contribute back, the same as any contributor. It helps me, helps others, it’s rewarding and enjoyable.
Two quick examples in front of me now:
I use firefox. There’s some old extensions, no longer maintained, which don’t have current equivalents and don’t work with FF 30+ changes. It’s easier to teach myself enough to update them myself (or develop equivalents) and if I do, I can also better handle other extensions that are nice but will become unmaintained in future. I have no idea how this one’s doing what it does, my text editor workspace has files open from the extension itself, temporary working snippets and info from a few dozen webpages, scratchpads for code tests I’m trying out and might discard in a few hours when I’m done and learned from them, schemas I’ve semi-worked out, todos, and so on. Only the important ones need saving. I have dozens of files open across various folders, many not in a folder, and the folders are off-GUI because of the open files. Using the popup would mean looking at the sidebar to find the source filename I want, and type a bit in (very slow!), while folders are off GUI. As for my own scratch files, it’s a PITA thinking up temp names for my files or remembering the author’s idiosyncratic naming, so I leave them as scratchpads till the end of the session, and use ongoing session backups during the day. It’s a quicker workflow; the snippet is captured temporarily in a temp text file; if I need it later it can be found in its unnamed buffer, and if not needed later, it’s not saved at the end of the session.
Second, and closer to home. Before posting my OP, I looked for half a day at a bunch of source for various ST plugins, to try and understand how they worked, as documentation is light in places and to see if any tricks I noticed might be reusable to make ST work better for me. You can imagine all the “that’s interesting/useful, remember it” which ended up temporarily copy-pasted to review in the afternoon. One eventually needed saving, but I needed a dozen temp scratch files while keeping different aspects of ST package coding techniques separate to reread later. (Motive? If I’m going to switch to ST as my text tool of choice, I want to know how malleable it is, and if I feel okay about throwing together a custom packaged functionality if I ever need some timesaving extra feature).
There may be a dozen ways different people would do these tasks and each would approach these differently. Given a sidebar list, I can easily recollect the position in the list of the one file in 50 and quickly recheck something, but it’s a lot more delayed if I have to think about and try to recollect/look up the actual filename (which scratch notes don’t have anyway). It’s a very small thing to have a context menu on filenames in the list, but I’m realising how much I use it. You don’t miss it till you don’t have it 
It would help to multiselect files and create a right click macro or plugin to autoextract the contents I’d like … but it’s tricky if the API covers tabs, folders, projects, menus, toolbar, but not all items in the sidebar. So I wondered if anyone close to ST could comment whether that’ll be likely added any time soon?
But right now I want to be editing, not stuck getting the editor reasonably productive for my work needs. Help much appreciated!!