Ability to configure tab width

I'm not entirely sold on the idea that this needs to be configurable, but I do think we need to not have a small number of tabs span the entire width of the window.
I think I like option 2 the most. If the space is there we might as well make use of it, right?

Yes, I do agree w/ the pros for option #2. However, option 3 gives a more symmetrical look and feel overall, which many people may prefer instead. That was the primary reason I proposed having the configurable option to cater to different personal preferences :-)

I was just playing around with some code for this and to allow tabs to not automagically fill all of the available space we will actually need to implement some scrolling in the tab bar.
For an example, fire up gEdit, make several tabs and then make the window smaller than the width of the tabs. It doesn't shrink them, it shows some of them and adds arrows. We would need to do the same. It's not impossible, but it's by no means a simple change, unfortunately.

Actually I'm wrong, the scrolling is available automatically. I wish we could have it not need to be scrollable, but I don't think gtk will allow for that.

The scroll_tabbar now switch options #1 and #2 and is in trunk revision 701

Thanks much Chris for getting this feature so quickly. Does this mean option #3 (fixed min/max tab width) is no longer being considered ? :). Personally, the symmetrical look was the reason I was looking forward to that settings control

Nikhil: The main reason I didn't do #3 is that it wasn't anywhere near as easy as #2 :)
It would require some fairly fundemental changes to the way we handle tab labels. While it's not impossible, I think it's unlikely to happen any time soon.
Perhaps this bug should be re-titled to relate to option #2 and a new wishlist bug be filed for #3. It's possible that at some point we will rework the tab labels (there are other wishlist bugs which would need it to be done too), at which point it would be much easier. Up to you :)