Hi,
There is no setting for this because the plan in the future is to augment the view edition with templating so that you would be able to easily edit the layout with tags without having to edit the PHP.
Settings are nice, but as you say we already have too many settings. The goal is not to add more settings, but make the interface better so that less settings are necessary to be able to do more things. That's what we've been working on for some time in some areas like the cart and the checkout, but we still have work in other areas like this one.
Another issue is that people want different things. We actually already have a new tab added automatically for custom product fields. It's just that they all go in the same tab. Some people might want different custom fields in different tabs and some together in some tabs, or a mix of both. Making something generic but flexible is really complex, and it adds complexity.
Besides, the modification to do for what you want is really not that complex. Our FAQ (
www.hikashop.com/support/documentation/106-faq.html#layo
) explains:
How to add a tab in the tabular view ?
You have to edit the view "product / show_tabular" via the menu Display > Views and add an entry like:
<li id="hikashop_show_tabular_custom_li" class="hikashop_tabs_li ui-corner-top">
<a onclick="displayTab('hikashop_show_tabular_custom');" href="javascript:void(0);">
<?php echo JText::_('YOUR_TAB_NAME');?>
</a>
</li>
In the < ul class="hikashop_tabs_ul"> element. Then, add a div with content after the "ul" thanks to:<div class="hikashop_tabs_content" id="hikashop_show_tabular_custom">
<!-- Your div content -->
</div>
So all that is left is to replace <!-- Your div content --> by: <?php echo $this->element->XXX; ?> where XXX is the column name of your custom product field, and you'll have a new tab with content you can add in the products when you edit them thanks to the custom field.