Multi-window support hard to discover

[Egmont Koblinger]

For quite some time I didn't know Terminator could have multiple windows, I thought it could only handle one. This is mainly because there's no direct option on the UI to open a new one.

I think the right-click menu should have an "Open Window" option next to "Open Tab".

This would be way more straightforward than all the other methods (reading docs, accidentally hitting the shortcut, finding the shortcut in prefs, launching another terminator and seeing that the command returns implicitly implying that it asked the running instance to open a new window) altogether.

This also makes the "Broadcast to all" option more dangerous. If someone believes that terminator can't have multiple windows, but he accidentally somehow launches one, he won't think about other targets where the keypresses are broadcast to.

I think that just simply adding an "Open Window" to the right-click menu would help a lot in all aspects.

See also bug 1514879.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

(Note: 'tab-top-new' is leftover, not used any more. Its removal has nothing to do with the rest, I just squeezed it in here.)

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Note: the patch adds a new UI string, make sure to update the .pot file.

[Stephen Boddy (stephen-j-boddy)]

I'm not entirely convinced by this. The problem is menu growth, and trying very hard to keep this menu small. People all want to add items to the menu (i.e. https://code.launchpad.net/~thayne-l-h/terminator/layout_menu/+merge/278250 with adding a layout sub-menu when we have the Layout Launcher window already).

For me I think one of (the?) unique points of Terminator is the ability to have multiple terminal views, without having a mess of additional windows. A single window with tabs (ala Gnome-Terminal) gives multiple terminals in a single window, but restricts you to one terminal view at a time. XTerm only gives you multiple windows, but is a mess on the screen/taskbar. Terminator gives multiple terminal views gathered in a single window. On top of that we have new tabs in the menu. We can provide multiple Windows too, but for a novice, they are not what sets Terminator apart. They are there and available, just not front and centre.

I'll leave this open as a wishlist, and maybe revisit this if public opinion manages to sway me.

Note to self: The last hunk of the patch affixed to lp:1520705 would also need applying if this patch get's applied, so profile is inherited if set.