I confirm the bug, thanks for the bug report.

[Desktop Action Window]

[Desktop Action Document]

As per the desktop entry spec, gedit should be providing app actions named "Document" and "Window", which I am guessing it is not.

The correct fix is probably to rename these sections in the .desktop file to correspond to the correct GAction names.

[mclasen@localhost gtk]$ gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.gedit --object-path /org/gnome/gedit --method org.gtk.Actions.List 
(['quit', 'new-window', 'preferences', 'about', 'help'],)

(citation) http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s07.html :

"""

The ActivateAction method is called when Desktop Actions are activated. The action-name parameter is the name of the action.

"""

I must say the desktop entry spec is much less than clear about the requirements for Desktop Action sections. To spell it out:

if DBusActivatable is true, then

a) the action identifier must be the name of a GAction (as returned by the command above) and listed in the Actions key in the main section
b) activating the action has the effect of calling org.freedesktop.ActivateAction for the action identifier
c) the Exec key in the action section is ignored

if DBusActivatable is false, then

a) the action identifier can be any string, but must still be listed int he Actions key
b) activating the action uses the Exec key in the action section

*** Bug 746461 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 299834 [details] [review]
Fix desktop actions

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=746461

Review of attachment 299834 [details] [review]:

Yup, that should do it.

Attachment 299834 [details] pushed as 89268c6 - Fix desktop actions

I think the patch should be backported to gnome-3-14.

*** Bug 605551 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Commit backported to the gnome-3-14 branch:

https://git.gnome.org/browse/gedit/commit/?h=gnome-3-14&id=8fa00d0a56f073e0ac44a7de33203d893af4a841