Re: [Usability] Standard keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab?

["Philip Ganchev" <phil ganchev gmail com>]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 7:03 AM, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
...
> If the gedit developers were willing to offer Ctrl+T for new tab in
> addition to the default Ctrl+N for New Window, that would go some way to
> meeting the users expectations and would be consistent with the behaviour
> from Mozilla.  However this would be slightly out of step with the
> behaviour of Gedit.

I agree. Control+N is more appropriate in Gedit because it's the only
way to open a new document, and the fact that you're trying to open a
new document is more salient than that it's in a tab. So while the HIG
should recommend a consistent shortcut, it should be sensitive to
these exceptional scenarios. It is possible to map more than one
shortcut, but only one can be left for the user to set and shown in
the menu; the others must be hard coded. So the HIG could recommend
doing that when it's appropriate.

By the way, I agree that tabs are in the way in many places, such as
in Gedit and in terminals and often in browsers. In particular, Gedit
should allow a way to open documents (existing and new) in a new
window by default.. Until then, it should keep Control+N mapped to
"File : New". Also by the way, I never understood why Gnome only
allows one shortcut per action.