#398 Move messages tab to right vertical tab

[HotBlack]

I think a rethink of the position/behaviour of messages bar is possible now that the PDF-viewer is embedded (which is amazing BTW).

At the moment I have the message bar only take up a small amount of space at the bottom of the screen , only enough to show only a few lines of text. The reason for this is that I have widescreen monitor (like I imagine most people do) and the limiting factor to how large a PDF preview is possible is limited by the height of that area, which depends on the height of the messages area.
Most of the time I have pretty bug free latex and a 1:1 PDF preview is much more valuable to me. So I have a very small messages window. However this is not ideal, as useful stuff does shows up in the messages window. Also when there is a problem I find myself dragging the window slider up whenever I am hunting down some mistake in document so I can see more messages at once (the same when looking at the errors list).

My dream solution (and this is just my opnion - I think TeXStudio is pretty perfect as it is) would be to move the message bar to the right side of the screen and have it function as a vertical tab bar. At first just this would be a huge help. However once this is done some reworking of a few other things would be possible. Ultimately the tabs would be:

1) Preview - the current PDF previewer complete with viewer toolbars etc (indeed each tab would have a tab specific tool-bar, showing buttons only relevant when doing that task)

2) Messages - This would combine messages and log, (buttons on this tabs toolbar would let you filter things in various ways). Also while the document is being built, it would be cool to have this tab become active and show the messages and possibly have this tab stay for a just moment once complication is complete before switching back to the preview.

3) Search - This seems broken in the message bar the moment. But have the CTRL+F short-cut open this tab, and then with the normal search UI currently shown below the editor, placed at the top of the tab. A list of all found would be shown on search things below. Clicking a line takes you to the point of the found thing in the editor.

4) Symbol collections that show all symbols from a specific packages and allow you to insert some obscure symbol. A toobar at the top would let you choose which package (e.g. amssymb) and the tab would show all symbols in that package. Some sort of extensibility here so people could submit maps for packages would be very cool. (This could also mean that the structure view then would become only a structure view).

5) Math Assistant - I don't use it myself, but embedding this as a tab which I can switch to when trying to build a tricky equation might make me use it more.

6) Plugins - (ok now I am going very far) Plug-ins would take the form of tabs that do various code generation tasks (similar to the equation editor). Such as a Tikz editor or a PStricks editor similar to latexdraw.

Anyway, just some ideas. Thanks for all the effort you put in.

[Ioannis Filippidis]

I agree that the messages/log pane should be movable to the left.
Structure is something occasionally used, especially during debugging, when one needs a long view of the log, instead of having to scroll the log every single time you compile: a huge time waster. Even better: offer the option to detach the log viewer and/or structure into separate windows, so that users can move them around/to other screens and position them as desired.