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Bug 543996 - 'Open terminal' should say 'Open new window'
'Open terminal' should say 'Open new window'
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-terminal
Classification: Core
Component: general
2.22.x
Other All
: Normal minor
: ---
Assigned To: GNOME Terminal Maintainers
GNOME Terminal Maintainers
[fixed-next]
: 767870 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2008-07-21 14:03 UTC by Ed Avis
Modified: 2017-10-30 00:01 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.21/2.22


Attachments
a number of small string changes (4.40 KB, patch)
2011-01-29 01:50 UTC, David Benjamin
none Details | Review

Description Ed Avis 2008-07-21 14:03:42 UTC
The File menu has two items at the top: 'open terminal' and 'open tab'.  To be clearer these should say 'open new window' and 'open new tab', or similar.

After all when you open a new tab you are also creating a new terminal.  There is nothing to particularly suggest that 'open terminal' will create a new window, rather than a new terminal in the existing window.

Other information:
Comment 1 Tomasz Chrzczonowicz 2010-03-21 23:52:15 UTC
I agree. "Open tab" and "Open terminal" are somewhat out of place.

I think that "New Window" and "New Tab" would be clearer,  more concise and more consistent with other programs in GNOME.

Natilus: New Tab, New Window
Epiphany: New tab, New Window
Firefox: New Window, New Tab
Comment 2 Allan Day 2010-03-31 15:14:29 UTC
Agreed. We should try to be consistent. 'New Window' and 'New Tab' are more logical.
Comment 3 David Benjamin 2011-01-29 01:50:25 UTC
Created attachment 179568 [details] [review]
a number of small string changes

Here's a patch for this and a number of other random string fixes I came across along the way. It doesn't look like feature freeze has hit yet?

- Fix capitalization of 'Detach tab' in Tabs menu
- Change 'Open {Tab,Terminal}' to 'New {Tab,Window}'
- Fix capitalization and use 'Toggle' instead of 'Hide and Show' in 'Hide and Show menubar' in shortcuts editor. Toggle is more concise and slightly more accurate.
- Place an ellipsis after 'Save Contents' as it opens a save dialog.
- Drop the ellipsis after 'Keyboard Shortcuts' and 'Profiles' (I'm not so sure about these, but it seems that if 'Preferences' doesn't get an ellipsis, these shouldn't either.)
Comment 4 Mariano Suárez-Alvarez 2011-01-31 05:21:26 UTC
I am pretty sure we've done this New --> Open --> New cycle at least one time already...
Comment 5 Sebastian 2011-10-16 14:06:42 UTC
Any updates on this bug? Confirm or Wont fix?
Comment 6 Sindhu S 2013-05-26 14:50:01 UTC
Confirmed that this issue exists in Git master too. CC-ing developer Christian Persch for comments.
Comment 7 Christian Persch 2013-06-08 14:07:34 UTC
I get bugmail for all of g-t; no need to CC me individually.

This will be fixed by removing the NewWindow/NewTab distinction and just having "New Terminal" that will open a tab/window according to a pref.
Comment 8 Dave Malcolm 2014-09-16 18:38:57 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> I get bugmail for all of g-t; no need to CC me individually.
> 
> This will be fixed by removing the NewWindow/NewTab distinction and just having
> "New Terminal" that will open a tab/window according to a pref.

[reopening]

That seems like a... suboptimal way to resolve this.  Can't we just change the wording, like in the original report?

Anecdotal data point: I currently have 7 gnome-terminal windows open.

Each window is a grouping of conceptually-related tabs, typically using the same "profile" for every tab within a window (where I'm using profiles to handle ssh into particular boxes):
* 3 of the windows have 2 tabs open
* 2 have 4 tabs open
* 2 have 5 tabs open

FWIW, typically I select a specific profile when selecting "Open Terminal" (i.e. "New Window"), but retain the same profile when creating a new tab within an existing window.

I may be a "power user" here, but I contend that anyone using gnome-terminal is, by definition, a "power user" of gnome.
Comment 9 Andre Robatino 2014-09-16 19:06:24 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> I get bugmail for all of g-t; no need to CC me individually.
> 
> This will be fixed by removing the NewWindow/NewTab distinction and just having
> "New Terminal" that will open a tab/window according to a pref.

I don't understand this either. Having a menu item whose behavior depends on a pref is still slower than using Ctrl-Shift-N or Ctrl-Shift-T, and unpredictable if you're working on someone else's box where the pref may be different. So power users probably won't use it, and novice users who expect menu items to behave consistently will be confused.
Comment 10 Pietro Gagliardi (andlabs) 2014-10-30 02:23:09 UTC
This solution throws away the discoverability of the windows/tabs features. I have until now been led to believe that gnome-terminal was removing tabs outright!

So why do it this way? I'm sure there's a logical explanatio, and I'm willing ot hear it, but...

(Side note: you could theoretically have the Control key change the label on the menus themselves to point out what they would do, a la Mac OS X, but I'm not sure if that would fix something for a major feature and not some minor variation on said feature.)
Comment 11 mike 2014-11-08 11:06:10 UTC
I just updated from openSUSE 13.1 which GNOME 3.10 to openSUSE 13.2 which has GNOME 3.14. I open new GNOME Terminal tabs using the menu item. When I discovered it wasn't there my first thought was, "WTF, GNOME Terminal has removed tabs!?" Then I thought surely not, because that would be a gross regression in functionality. So I hit Google, was reminded the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl-Shift-T and then eventually found this bug report.




How is someone new to GNOME Terminal going to discover the tab feature?

Someone who's not used GNOME before, but has used other Desktop Environments with Terminal applications that provide tabs is going to look for a menu item to open a new tab and not find out. They might try pressing Ctrl-T to get a tab, which works in Firefox, Google Chrome, Nautlius, Epiphany and probably a bunch of other things too. But that won't work. Because the keyboard shortcut for a new tab in GNOME Terminal is not Ctrl-T.

Someone who hasn't used a Terminal application with tabs, or any Terminal application at all, may not be aware that there could be tabs. They'll use the 'Open Terminal' menu item to get more command prompts if they want them and in the past they would in doing so have noticed the option to create a new tab. But now they won't notice the new tab option because it's not there!



Removing the menu item to open a new tab doesn't even fix the the bug Ed Avis raised. The remaining menu item is still called 'Open Terminal'.

Why not simply change the wording as suggested in comment 2?
Comment 12 Dave Malcolm 2014-12-10 15:05:31 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> I get bugmail for all of g-t; no need to CC me individually.
> 
> This will be fixed by removing the NewWindow/NewTab distinction and just having
> "New Terminal" that will open a tab/window according to a pref.

The relevant commit appears to have been:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-terminal/commit/?id=99fc0136a5be6323b81b8b339482bc699b53e1f9

though I see various followups e.g.
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-terminal/commit/?id=fbc9e952deb9ba995c5180de5f3e21304d82c2f4
Comment 13 Dave Malcolm 2014-12-10 15:09:24 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > I get bugmail for all of g-t; no need to CC me individually.
> > 
> > This will be fixed by removing the NewWindow/NewTab distinction and just having
> > "New Terminal" that will open a tab/window according to a pref.
> 
> The relevant commit appears to have been:
> https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-terminal/commit/?id=99fc0136a5be6323b81b8b339482bc699b53e1f9

$ git tag --contains 99fc0136a5be6323b81b8b339482bc699b53e1f9
3.11.0
3.11.2
3.11.3
3.12.0
3.12.1
3.12.2
3.12.3
3.13.0
3.13.1
3.13.2
3.13.90
3.13.92
3.14.0
3.14.1
3.14.2
3.9.90

...suggesting this affects 3.11.0 onwards (along with 3.9.90)
Comment 14 Debarshi Ray 2016-05-16 11:58:04 UTC
(In reply to Christian Persch from comment #7)
> This will be fixed by removing the NewWindow/NewTab distinction and just
> having "New Terminal" that will open a tab/window according to a pref.

If the pref is set to open new terminals in tabs, then we no longer have a way to open a new window solely by using the mouse. Similarly, if the pref is set to open new terminals in windows, then we cannot open the second tab by solely using the mouse. One could call this an accessibility problem, but then a terminal is of limited use if you cannot use a keyboard.
Comment 15 Debarshi Ray 2016-06-20 12:34:15 UTC
*** Bug 767870 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 Sébastien Wilmet 2016-06-20 18:41:02 UTC
It is not only an accessibility problem, it is also a usability problem.

With the current UI, for a new user it is hard to discover that gnome-terminal can actually open several tabs, because when there is only one terminal in a window, the tab is hidden.
Comment 17 Dan Mick 2016-08-19 18:15:48 UTC
Utter insanity.  *Who asked* for the feature to be removed?  What possible goal does it serve?
Comment 18 Dan Mick 2017-10-24 00:31:38 UTC
So, despite all the objections, no further discussion, just, "close the bug"?  Don't even open another to address the objections?

lovely.
Comment 19 mike 2017-10-24 12:32:38 UTC
(In reply to Dan Mick from comment #18)
> So, despite all the objections, no further discussion, just, "close the
> bug"?  Don't even open another to address the objections?
> 
> lovely.

Interestingly GNOME Terminal 3.24.2 in Fedora 26 has separate menu items for "New Tab" and "New Window". The change log for the Fedora gnome-terminal package contains:


* Tue Nov 08 2016 Debarshi Ray <rishi@fedoraproject.org> - 3.22.1-1
- Update to 3.22.1
- Rebase the translations
- Restore custom terminal titles
- Restore separate menuitems for opening tabs and windows


It looks like the separate tabs are a Fedora modification by way of this patch

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/gnome-terminal/blob/master/f/gnome-terminal-notify-open-title-transparency.patch

but I don't currently have access to an instance of any other distro to check.

Some significant words from that patch:

"Without the separate menuitems, it was not possible to open new tabs or
windows solely by using the mouse if the preference was set to windows
or tabs respectively. This isn't ideal for accessibility.
The preference is also hard to discover and there was simply no strong
justification for unifying the menuitems in the first place."

I still have on idea why unifying the menu items was thought to be a good idea. Is there an explanation anywhere?
Comment 20 Strangiato 2017-10-30 00:01:00 UTC
on Arch linux I see "Open terminal" in gnome-terminal 3.26.1.