Include all open files in sidebar

I expected to find this topic already opened… or perhaps my search was superficial? Anyway, how would the fellowship see the inclusion of all open files in the sidebar? At the moment, the sidebar only displays the outline of the active file. I happen to spread my stuff in separate small files instead of a single large one (one of several reasons for my switch away from OmniFocus and the like).

It is open to discussion whether tags would be listed in a unified sidebar list or in a separate list per file.

This might be the kind of feature that warrants a preference (i suspect some would be delighted to see it, others distracted by it).

Sorry this just isn’t possible yet. I do have a long term issue tracking this, but no immediate plans to start development on it.

I would be fairly simple to add a new list of all open files to the sidebar, but that would mess with the current semantics … right now the sidebar a summary and entry point into the current document. I don’t think it would be clear to include a list of documents there as well. And merging different document projects, searches, and tags into the sidebar would create confusion I think.

One solution would be to add another files sidebar, like Notes.app has. So show file sources in outermost sidebar, then the current sidebar in an inner sidebar, and then the editor content last. Three panes instead of two. But even in that interface it’s hard to figure where unified search results, projects, searches, and tags would go.

A more flexible solution might be to create a whole new window type whose job was to index into and search over all open documents. At the moment that feels like it could be a better more flexible solution. But it’s still quite a bit of work to add such a feature. I don’t expect that I’d start on this anytime in the near future. But I am linking to this discussion from the issue that I have tracking this.