Bug#280564: acknowledged by developer (Re: gedit should open a new pad when an additional instance is spawned)

[Adam Lydick]

[reopening with a more clear argument. if you feel strongly about it,
you can go ahead and close this again, and I can pester upstream
instead ;)]

Are you suggesting that bringing the existing instance to the foreground
without opening a new pad is a good default behavior when "gedit" is
chosen from the gnome menu?

To me, this seems rather counterintuitive -- if the user wanted to bring
the single-instance to the foreground, they would have chosen it from
the tasklist on the panel. Launching from the application menu means
"give me a new logical instance", even if it is really a single process
underneath for performance reasons (and to allow for tabbed windows).

Could you add the appropriate flags to the .desktop for the gnome menu?
(Or explain why the existing behavior is better?)

Specifically, I think I'd like to see (tested only slightly):

-Exec=gedit %U
+Exec=gedit --new-window %U

or maybe (this matches "open multiple existing documents" behavior)
+Exec=gedit --new-document %U

Personally I like a new window, but I would be perfectly happy with just
a new tab as well.

Thanks,

Adam

[snip]

> > When opening an additional instance of gedit, the existing instance is=20
> > given focus, but the last-selected tab is selected.
> [...]
> > Expected behavior:
> > * An additional tab should have been created and given focus.
> 
>  I don't know whether these flags are new, but I think you can use the
>  "--new-window" and "--new-document" flags from the command line or from
>  your shortcuts.
> 
>  (I'm closing this report, reopen it if necessary.)

[snip]