This discussion does have something that the Issue doesn’t: the explicit list of limitations/improvements to the Document List that would need to be implemented to make it an acceptible alternative.
@yellowasterisk said:
Highlighting the opened tab as in the tab bar (with colored top etc.).
Color would be nice. But as @alan-kilborn pointed out, it does show the “selected” bar on the active Document when you’re working in the editor side of things. And true, if you click in the empty space in the Document List, it de-highlights that… but I’m not sure that’s unexpected, so probably color would be better.
Option to drag the tab.
You cannot drag (yet), though #13961, #7690, and #2221 are all open requests for the drag-the-tab. If someone wanted to successfully code that (vibe or otherwise), meeting all the requirements in CONTRIBUTING.md, that would be awesome, since it’s literally been a request since 2016.
As a workaround, as mentioned in this comment, and as I reiterated in this comment, the Ctrl+Shift+PageUp/PageDown shortcuts for View > Tab > Move Tab Backward/Forward do work, even when the Document List panel has focus: so if you click on the tab you want to move, instead of dragging, you can Ctrl+Shift+PageXXX to move it around in the list. For long lists, you can hold the combo to just wait while it progresses through the long list. (And if you assign keys to the View > Tab > Move to Start/End actions in Shortcut Mapper, you can use those shortcuts there, as well.)
Option to enlarge vertical tabs, like the current horizontal tabs with ‘Reduce’ option unchecked.
Admittedly, this doesn’t exist.
(update: deleted portions of my reply that were basically replica’s of @alan-kilborn’s response from Jan 2025)