Module shell_tabs 

Tabs belong to the desktop, never to an application.

A Tilo app shows one thing: a page, a file, a conversation. Several of them side by side are several app instances, and the shell groups them as tabs of a window group (Workspace → Strip → WindowGroup → Tab). An app that wants “another one of these next to me” — a link opened in a new tab, Ctrl+T, a file opened beside the current one — asks the shell for it here instead of growing a tab strip of its own.

Requests are queued on the UI thread and the app runner hands them to the session shell over the app’s authenticated shell-ui connection, which knows the asking app and its tab. Outside a Tilo session there is no desktop tab model: the runner opens a new window of the same app instead (another process given the same target), so “beside me” still means “another instance”, never a tab inside this window.

The keyboard is the same everywhere: Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W and Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd on macOS) reach these requests when the focused widget leaves the chord unhandled, so every app gets the desktop’s tab chords without implementing them.

Enums

TabRequest

What an app may ask of the desktop’s tab model about itself.

Functions

chord_request

The desktop tab chord a key press names, if any: Ctrl+T opens a new tab of this app, Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab, Ctrl+W closes this tab. command is the platform’s command modifier (Ctrl, or Cmd on macOS); Alt and Super chords are never these.

close_this

Close this app’s tab the way the desktop closes any tab.

launch_instance

The record instance the shell launched this process for, which is how it finds this app’s own tab. None outside a shell launch.

open_beside

Ask the desktop for another instance of this app in a new tab right after this one, opening target (a URI) when given.

place_next_window_beside

Place the next window this app maps as a tab right after this one.

reopen_closed

Reopen the workspace’s most recently closed tab.

request

Queue the request chord_request named.

take_requests

Every request queued on this thread, oldest first.