"New Tab" disappeared from the GNOME Terminal menu

[AsciiWolf]

Impact
------
GNOME Terminal removed the New Tab menu option before Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Tabs are a really popular feature in terminals and it's annoying to have this feature hidden.

Test Case
---------
Install the update.
Close all terminals.
Open a terminal.
In the File menu should be New Tab and New Window menu items. Both should work.

Regression Potential
--------------------
Restoring the previous behavior is now a one-line hidden configure option.

Enabling that option removes the "Open new terminals in" option mentioned in the workaround.

This build option is set in Fedora (and other distros that use the Fedora tweaks) and is not believed to have any negative consequences.

Other Info
----------
There are no plans at this time to try to backport this change to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or 17.10 because it would not be a simple one-line change there. (The configure flag was enabled in git commit 0820b385 .)

https://debarshiray.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/gnome-terminal-separate-menu-items-for-opening-tabs-and-windows/

Workaround
----------
In Edit > Preferences (General) you can set "Open new terminals in Tab". Now, the File > New Window menu item opens a new tab instead of a new window.

Original Bug Report
-------------------
There is not a "New Tab" option in the file menu of GNOME Terminal anymore on Ubuntu Bionic. It looks like it disappeared after some recent update. However, the CTRL + Shift + T shortcut works as expected.

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

(The "New Tab" option is present in the upstream GNOME Terminal so this is not an upstream issue.)

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Hi,

I'm not sure what makes you believe there's a "New Tab" in mainstream GNOME Terminal, it's not the case. "New Window" and "New Tab" were merged quite some time ago into a single "New Terminal". The two actions are still available as separate shortcuts. The menu entry behaves according to Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Open new terminals in: Window/Tab.

[AsciiWolf (asciiwolf)]

Oops, didn't know that! The "New Tab" menu option is there in Fedora.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Yup, it's *their* patch :)

Actually I think gnome-terminal is just a

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

(sorry)

I think gnome-terminal is just a "define DISUNIFY_NEW_TERMINAL_SECTION" away from the previous behavior... dunno, haven't tried.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Yup, tried it now. Just compile with
  CPPFLAGS=-DDISUNIFY_NEW_TERMINAL_SECTION ./configure --blahblah
and you'll get two separate entries.

I have no idea why the upstream change was made.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-terminal - 3.28.1-1ubuntu2

---------------
gnome-terminal (3.28.1-1ubuntu2) cosmic; urgency=medium

  * Restore File > New Tab menu item. Thanks Debarshi Ray for the suggestion.
    (LP: #1747171)

 -- Jeremy Bicha <email address hidden> Fri, 11 May 2018 17:15:21 -0400

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

Hello AsciiWolf, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-terminal into bionic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/3.28.1-1ubuntu1.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-bionic to verification-done-bionic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-bionic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

It's probably not a real concern since I'm sure it's all covered, but could we make sure the new menu item is translated correctly for non-EN languages?

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

The new menu items are there in mainstream gnome-terminal's source (behind a configure flag; so they aren't added by Ubuntu). Hence they are translated (or not) according to the mainstream GNOME translators' work.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Jeremy, Łukasz,

If you're about to release an update for Bionic, could you please backport the trivial
  https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-terminal/commit/?h=gnome-3-28&id=1828cb6d5
as well?

At one place the strings are accidentally left untranslated on the UI, even though at some other place these same strings appear properly translated (that is, the translations are already present accoding to translators' work, just remain unused at one place).

Technically it's absolutely independent from the current "New Tab" issue; however, I think we should optimize for releasing as few updates as possible, hence I'm trying to sneak it in here. Thanks!

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Egmont, thank you for comment. comment #8 is the template message indicating that this update has already landed in bionic-proposed so I think we'll wait for the next Stable Release Update (SRU) for that fix. You're welcome to open a new bug for that issue and you can read about the process at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates#Procedure

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I verified that the New Tab menu option is present after installing gnome-terminal 3.28.1-1ubuntu1.1 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

I also installed language-pack-gnome-fr, switched my language to French (France) in Settings > Region and Language. I logged out and logged back in. I opened the Terminal and verified that the New Tab option is translated (Nouvel onglet) and works.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Well, since it's in "proposed", which I guess means waiting for feedback, and is not an urgent update at all, my feedback was maybe you should hold it off and release along with that other fix to save an update for users :-) Anyway, filed that as bug 1771290, rest is up to you. Thanks a lot! :-)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-terminal - 3.28.1-1ubuntu1.1

---------------
gnome-terminal (3.28.1-1ubuntu1.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Restore File > New Tab menu item. Thanks Debarshi Ray for the suggestion.
    (LP: #1747171)

 -- Jeremy Bicha <email address hidden> Fri, 11 May 2018 17:15:21 -0400

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The verification of the Stable Release Update for gnome-terminal has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

[Jani Uusitalo (uusijani)]

Urgh, I'd argue that changing this back *is* a regression. The merged menu item has been the default since (at least) 16.04, and now the cognitive load of opening a new tab has suddenly increased: instead of "new terminal" I now again have to pick the one I want (which is always tabs for me) from two options each time, instead of just the one.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Jani, could you use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+T to open a new tab (or Ctrl+Shift+N to open a new window) ?

New Tab is the first item in the File list so I'm not sure what more we can do here. From my understanding, it's a lot more popular to offer both New Tab and New Window than to only allow one option there.

[Jani Uusitalo (uusijani)]

Jeremy: If this is indeed the popular choice then I fully respect that. I just wanted to voice my disgruntlement, since I feel the way this was set by upstream is much simpler. Sorry for being late with it, didn't realize this was getting overridden before the change already came into effect.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Jani, the GNOME Terminal developer chose to implement this as a build-time option. If it is really a big deal to you, you could try filing a bug to ask that he make it a more traditional option in Preferences (using gsettings). It's hard to say whether he would be interested in implementing that, but it may still be worth asking.

[Jani Uusitalo (uusijani)]

Okay, did it! https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal/issues/30

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Ok, he made the change for gnome-terminal 3.30.1 which has a reasonable chance of being in Ubuntu 18.10 available in October. (Basically, you'll need to change a gsettings value from the command line or by using dconf-editor.)

I'm not very interested in trying to backport this change to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. If you want to try to convince us to do that, please open a new bug against gnome-terminal here. In general, people don't read closed bugs. :)

[Jani Uusitalo (uusijani)]

All right. Thanks, Jeremy!