GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 682737
Restore "Launch Terminal" keyboard shortcut schema
Last modified: 2012-08-28 15:30:49 UTC
GNOME used to have a "launch terminal" keyboard shortcut schema but this was dropped in the 3.4 cycle as this code was ported from gconf to gsettings. See bug 663623 for more info. I'm guessing that other distros didn't make a lot of use out of it (I don't really remember though) but Ubuntu users and developers have grown rather attached to Ctrl+Alt+T being a quick, easy way to open a terminal. I spent several hours trying to use the custom keybindings framework to support a distro-specified default for a custom keybinding but I couldn't get it to work. I tried a gsettings override and I also tried adding an extra custom keybinding schema to org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.gschema.xml.in.in. Even if it did work, it wouldn't support the org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal gsettings value which Debian & derivatives use. The solution that did work was to add back in support in gnome-settings-daemon and gnome-control-center to explicitly support "Launch terminal". I am submitting those patches here as I think they are actually rather useful to other distros too.
Created attachment 222487 [details] [review] media-keys: Restore "Launch terminal" keyboard shortcut schema Also set it to be activated with Ctrl+Alt+t
Created attachment 222488 [details] [review] keyboard: Restore "Launch terminal" keyboard shortcut preference Bumping the minimum g-s-d as this needs the new schema added there
I think I would be much happier with gnome-terminal installing a 'Lauch gnome-terminal' keybinding. Of course, other terminal emulators would have to do the same.
I'm not interested in seeing the "Launch Terminal" shortcut added back. It takes the whole of 3 seconds to add it back. It's especially bad when you say "Restore" in those gnome-settings-daemon patches. It was never gnome-settings-daemon launching the terminals. I'll take patches to make this sort of additions an easier drop-in, but having it by default is out of the question.
OK, I expected that the patch would probably not be accepted even though it's very useful to Ubuntu users, who, when trying other distros, wonder why the shortcut isn't present. I submitted the patch because we need it and are using it on Ubuntu and I believe it's useful to other distros. I said "restore" because the keyboard shortcut was dropped in the gconf>gsettings transition. I don't think it matters much that the code was in metacity back then. There's still a bug here: a distro can't add a custom keyboard shortcut. At least as mentioned in my original post, I couldn't get it to work. Maybe we should retitle the bug to reflect that issue? I don't know how to add a custom keyboard shortcut in gnome-terminal that would be honored by the shell.