Keyboard shortcuts to move betwen tabs/views in the secondary sidebar?

[wurli]

I've been trying to set some keymaps to maximise the different sections of the secondary sidebar and simultaneously minimise the others, but I'm now starting to think it's not possible. For example:

• A keybinding to maximise the console within the secondary sidebar
• A keybinding to maximise the plots view within the secondary sidebar
• A keybinding to maximise the variables view within the secondary sidebar

Here's the layout I generally use with Positron:

Thankfully, it's easy to move focus to the console by setting a keybinding for workbench.action.positronConsole.focusConsole. I use this all the time, along with workbench.action.navigate(Left|Right) to move between the editor and the main/secondary sidebars. Unfortunately I just find switching between console/variables/plots really fiddly, given that my (fairly large) monitor doesn't have enough vertical space to properly accommodate all 3 at once, and I find myself needing to switch between them so often.

Generally Positron is a complete joy to use, so this is a fairly minor issue given the big picture 😄 But thought it was worth creating a discussion nonetheless in case this is something that can be added - or already exists and I've just missed!

Thank you 🙏

[lionel-]

I've been looking for such a command as well! I couldn't find anything provided by VS Code so I think if we want to implement it we'd have to do it ourselves. But it feels like that should be a VS Code viewpane feature (e.g. a parameter to the switching command).

[wurli]

I agree, it took a while for me to convince myself that VS Code really didn't support this out of the box. NB I've opened an issue to see if anyone can shed some light on why this isn't already the case (or better yet add the feature 😁).

I guess the secondary sidebar is a more integral part of the Positron experience than it typically would be in VS Code, so perhaps it's not so surprising that they haven't developed an API for this yet. Perhaps a workaround in Positron would be to add workbench.panel.positron(Console|Plots|Variables).unfocus in addition to to existing focus commands, which should I think be enough for users to jerry-rig their own keybinds to do this. I think the only issue would then be how the plots panel auto-expands when you produce a plot from the console...

[wurli]

Actually, I now see there are already workbench.panel.positron(Console|Plots|Variables).toggleVisibility commands available, but I haven't been able to get them to work/have any visible effect so far, so I'm not sure if this is what they're meant to be doing or not...

[juliasilge]

You may be running into #811, and specifically note what I say in #811 (comment).

[wurli]

Hm, I think I'm getting the expected toggle behaviour when I use the command palette, but not when I use a keybinding 🤔 I can't get the command to trigger at all using a keybinding, e.g. using JSON like this: { "key": "cmd+k p, "command": "workbench.panel.positronPlots.toggleVisibility" }.

Anyway, I think the toggle functionality doesn't have quite the behaviour I'm after anyway. I like the toggle behaviour when going from minimised (i.e. expanding the view in question), but I'd like the next toggle to minimise the view again rather than close the whole secondary sidebar.

[justinasR-19]

really sorry. Different topic - what's your colour scheme that you use?

[wurli]

Haha no probs, it’s Cobalt2. I’ll live and die by the original Cobalt from TextMate, but there’s no good port for VSCode. This successor is pretty nice though IMO :)