Created attachment 68558 [details]
Mockup of removed tittle from tab.

We need to put the menu button somewhere and GTK+ doesn't allow us to put it where you put it in your mockup. Sorry, but your suggestion is not implementable.

I'd like to re-open this bug because even if GTK+ does not make it easy, it is still possible to have a button added to the right of the tabs (like e.g. in Firefox).  But maybe this should depend on a new bug report to be submitted against GTK+?

I would really like to save the vertical space that is currently taken by this button (and the tab name / title).

With GtkNotebook now supporting this it would be incredibly nice to get this into 2.8. From what I've heard GTK+ 2.20 is soon to be out, and with quite a lot of things left to do on 2.8 we might be able to depend on GTK+ 2.20 for GIMP 2.8. Setting milestone to 2.8.

Created attachment 152751 [details] [review]
0001-app-Remove-the-drag-handle-and-use-tabs-exclusively.patch

Here's a straigtforward patch using GTK 2.20 API, probably needs some further work. I'll start a thread on gimp-developer.

Created attachment 152905 [details] [review]
/0001-app-Remove-the-drag-handle-from-dockables-and-use-ta.patch

Same as before but also make the Tab Style meny appear in dockbooks with only one tab.

Link to thread:
http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2010-February/024120.html

Conclusion:
Add new tab style "Automatic" and make it default. If it works well, commit when we can depend on GTK 2.20.

There we go, first

commit 9b86acd16bc50cd22ac7b7defaab4e3eee78039d
Author: Martin Nordholts <martinn@src.gnome.org>
Date:   Fri Jun 11 23:18:49 2010 +0200

    Add 'Automatic' Tab Style support
    
    Add support for a new type of Tab Style called 'Automatic'. This tab
    style makes the GimpDockbook use the biggest actual tab style it can
    for its auto tab style dockables, based on its widget allocation.
    
    The tab style candidates for auto tab style are "Status + Blurb",
    "Status + Text" and "Status". A docked widget can also say that it
    wants to use "Icon" instead of "Status" for its auto tab style. The
    'Tool Options' dockable does this. This is to be as backwards
    compatible with the old tab style setup, we make 'automatic' the
    default everywhere.
    
    We have quite a bit of dependency to internal layout code in
    GtkNotebook, but the current code should be pixel perfect and rather
    complete.
    
    Also add a basic regression test.

and then:

commit 6812d5bdceb05263ca6068f3084b25b37e40323c
Author: Martin Nordholts <martinn@src.gnome.org>
Date:   Wed May 26 18:10:31 2010 +0200

    Bug 346881 - Remove redundant title of tab and move menu button up
    
    Remove the dockable drag handle and move the menu button it hosts up
    to the GimpDockbook, with the gtk_notebook_set_action_widget() API.
    
    This frees up quite a lot of screen estate which can be used for the
    content of dockables instead.

It should be pretty stable and pixel-perfect by now, but I'll leave this bug report open for a while longer so we have a place to iron out the last things.

Review of attachment 152905 [details] [review]:

Commited.

There have been some final polishing and fixes by now, closing as FIXED.