Comment 13 for bug 372132

Firstly I don't want to derail this discussion in any way as some good points have been made.

However as a relative newcomer to Ubuntu this was one of the first shortfalls I noticed. Taking Gorka Navarrete's post at the top a little further, I don't see the point of creating a "new" document only to find it as a file on the desktop. For example, if I needed to create an O.O Word Doc I obviously want some text to be saved. Would it not be an idea, and in my opinion a richer experience, if when I right click and choose "Create Document -> Open Office_Word Document", the Word application opens with a blank page ready to receive my text? Thus eliminating points #1 - #3 in Gorka Navarrete's post. From here, the "New" document could be saved to your chosen destination and in the format you choose. This then also eliminates the need to manually move "New" documents off the desktop.
I agree that this menu should incorporate the most useful shortcuts and propagate, depending on the software installed.

Footnote: What I propose here is not the std behaviour of Windows out of the box, but is possible to achieve; by adding shortcuts of application "Master_Templates" to the "New" menu, e.g M$ Word. Works as I have outlined above.
I have tried this approach in Ubuntu, using "Create Launcher" but when they are placed into the Templates folder, the behaviour of the launcher defaults to Create Document.