Comment 17 for bug 389873

Tobias, that argument has nothing to do with /users/. I'm not saying that you're wrong or right, I just want to make it clear that at the end of the day, it's the /users/ that matter and we need to figure out what keyboard shortcuts satisfy /users/, and not what keyboard shortcuts satisfy our abstract ideas about what a Browser is and what a Text Editor is and how a Browser is different from a Text Editor, and which type of application did what first way back when.

We all agree that keyboard shortcuts should be consistent. That means that Ctrl-N should basically do the same thing regardless of context (i.e. which application is active when you press it). The same goes for Ctrl-T. Now, we are faced with two pieces of functionality here, one is primary and the other is secondary. The primary piece of functionality is tabs. It is primary because more tabs are opened than windows in any given application with tabs and windows (if tabs are not used at all, these numbers are the same). Now, Ctrl-T is a very nice shortcut for opening a new tab, do we agree on that? It seems that many applications supporting tabs use it. In fact, I cannot think of a tabbed application that uses a different shortcut for tab creation (besides gedit). You seem to be upset that browsers have established a convention here, but face it, they have. Stubbornly boycotting this convention will only serve to disappoint users and make us all look bad.

So, Ctrl-T means open a new tab. If you want to dispute that, I'm really not sure what ground you have to stand on really.

Now, there's the issue of opening a new window. In general, Ctrl-N means "new <something>", as we agree. Now, if Ctrl-T creates new Tabs, and it seems poor design to assign two user-visible features with different names and two separate keyboard shortcuts to the same functionality, we have to find a reasonable interpretation of Ctrl-N in the context of gedit that is not equivalent to creating a new tab. We're left the option of assigning no meaning to this shortcut, or making Ctrl-N create a new document (in a new window). I think the latter is clearly more consistent with Ctrl-N as used in other applications, and as specified in the HIG.