Inconsistencies between gedit and the Unity dock

[John Smith]

Here's the thing:

I've got gedit locked to the Unity dock. When I click on the gedit icon then gedit opens. There's one window with one tab called 'Untitled Document 1'. Fine so far.

Now when right clicking on the gedit icon in the unity dock there are 'Open a New Window' and 'Open a New Document.' When I click either of those then a second gedit window opens with two new tabs called 'Untitled Document 2' and 'Untitled Document 3'.

I can't imagine this to be the correct behavior. Not only does one click opens two new tabs, 'Open a New Document' also opens a complete new gedit window.

[John Smith (lastgooddays)]

By the way, I'm running Ubuntu 12.04

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1128100/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[John Smith (lastgooddays)]

Providing the package as requested by crichton. Though I'm not sure whether it should be gedit or the unity dock.

[Edward Donovan (edward.donovan)]

Hi John, thanks for the report. You've found a bug that's also been reported at bug 1027584. It's fixed in newer release of Ubuntu. Looking at that page, I'm not quite sure if or when it'd going to get into Precise. But you can fix it on your machine pretty easily.

Those menu items, called quicklists in Unity, are defined in

  /usr/share/applications/gedit.desktop

which belongs to gedit. Here's the relevant text from that file, on my machine:

[Desktop Action Window]
Name=Open a New Window
Exec=gedit --new-window
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

[Desktop Action Document]
Name=Open a New Document
Exec=gedit --new-document
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

In the 12.04 version, it's "gedit --new-window" in both cases, instead of "gedit --new-document" where it should be.

Until you get the fix, by update or upgrade, you can override the system gedit.desktop file, with one for your user account, as ~/.local/share/applications/gedit.desktop. You can copy the system one there, then edit it.

You'll probably want to keep an eye for the eventual update, and remove your local gedit.desktop, when it comes, or, if you have more changes you want to keep there, at least keep an eye for changes in the system one.

And I'm gonna mark this bug as a duplicate of bug 1027584. I'll subscribe to this, so you can keep posting here, if you want some more help with a workaround, or on the main bug if you have more general questions.

Hope this helps some. :)

---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[John Smith (lastgooddays)]

Hi Edward,

I realize I should use the latest version of Ubuntu when filing a bug report. It's good to see that this issue got addressed.

However, even when changing /usr/share/applications/gedit.desktop like you said, there's still a problem. "Open a New Document" works fine now. But "Open a New Window" opens a new gedit window with two tabs instead of one tab.

Can you or anybody else confirm this?