For comparison, Google Docs launched tabs in October of last year which is also for editing e.g. a chapter at a time:
> If you download or print from Google Docs, you'll only download or print the active tab. If you want to download or print all tabs at once, you can do it from Google Drive
This is multiple documents, barely/mildly organized. I have yet to see someone use these tabs at work though, so maybe everyone is rejecting them as poorly implemented organization. What am I missing about Tabs?
"document-based workflows" are a good idea[0] but I think this is a terrible execution of it.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20040625150625/https://www.edwar....
FYI, tabs are not "buried in some submenu", they're shown on every new document. They're not "treated as a 2nd class citizen throughout", they're an obvious "1st class" feature.
It's the same concept as tabs in Sheets/Excel, which I've never heard anybody complain about. It's a nice UX to be able to focus on one thing rather than deal with scrolling. E.g. one tab for agenda items, another for meeting notes, another for action items assigned to people.
But also for things like chapters, where a document is just too long for scrolling otherwise.
And the reality is that probably 99% of Docs never get printed or downloaded/converted. If an org uses Google, everything usually just stays a Doc, except occasionally when dealing with external folks. (I do find it a bit weird that you have to go to Drive to print/convert all tabs at once, but it's not exactly difficult. Still, I hope that will get fixed at some point.)