Sheet command to show name of current sheet on status line

[daviewales]

If you have multiple sheets open, it can be hard to know the name of the current sheet, especially if you have lots of sheets with long names, because the sheet tabs get squished together, and there's not enough room for the full sheet name.
Of course, you can switch to the Sheets sheet, and see which sheet is selected.
But it would be nice if you could quickly see the sheet name on the status line.

Suggestion: Add the following sheet command:

# Show current sheet name on status line.
# Ctrl+G shortcut matches similar Vim command
BaseSheet.addCommand('Ctrl+G', 'show-sheet', 'vd.status(sheet.name)', 'Show name of current sheet on status line')

I don't think the Ctrl+G shortcut is currently used for anything else.
Happy to send this as a PR if it would be accepted.

[saulpw]

@daviewales This is a good tip! I'm wondering, do you think that it's more useful to have a crowded sheet summary on the bottom line, or to always show the current sheet's full name and row/col #?

For larger context, Ctrl+G used to be default bound to show-cursor, like you suggest (and we should add the full sheet name to show-cursor too). In the latest VisiData, Ctrl+G cycles the sidebar (consistent with Ctrl+G in the input mode).

[daviewales]

Yes, it would make sense to add the filename to show-cursor, which would avoid the need for a separate command. Although I'm not sure that show-cursor is an intuitive name, if I'm looking for the filename. In Vim, it's called :file, which doesn't quite work, because the sheet name may be different to the filename. And also, that's not intuitive if you were looking for the cursor position...

In Vim Ctrl+G / :file does show both the filename and the cursor position, so that's a good precedent for including both in one command. Vim also shows the file status here (readonly, modified, read errors, new file).

Personally, I think I'd want the current filename to get priority in the bottom bar. But the tabs are nice when there is a small number of sheets, and the names aren't too long. The current behaviour does expand the tab width to include the full name when it is selected, but not if you have too many tabs open already, and the one with the long name is too far to the right. In fact, even with short names, later tabs are hidden, and can't be found without a trip to the Sheets sheet.

Another small tweak which would improve the usability of the current tab bar would be to avoid pre-emptively trimming the filenames, when there's plenty of room. For example, you might have two sheets open with long names, and you might have a wide monitor, with plenty of space to display both names. But Visidata will still trim the name of the unselected sheet. For example, you can see that there is plenty of space to show more of the other tab names here:

For maximum flexibility, I imagine it could be cool to have a pop-up mini-Sheets-sheet, which could be a vertical split on the left with just the sheet names. This could function like the files sidebar in an IDE for example. (Unlike just putting the Sheets sheet in a regular Visidata split pane, pressing Enter on a sheet would not replace the mini-Sheets-sheet with the selected sheet, but would switch the sheet selected in the main view pane.)

Another option could just be to add a 'Sheets' menu which lists all the open sheets, including a visual indicator highlighting the current sheet.

Another option could be to put the current sheet name into the top bar.
Considering that the VisiData version and the MOTD are both also displayed in the statuses sidebar on first launch and in the Statuses history (View > Statuses), perhaps they could be replaced with the current sheet name?