Templates - What's Up with the template keyword?

[Ron Tarrant]

On Monday, 8 April 2019 at 14:56:46 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

> In the subsequent sections, I show both long and short 
> (eponymous) forms of enum and function templates.

In your book, Mike, you stated:

> Remember, a template is only instantiated once for each set of 
> arguments and
> the same instantiation can be repeated in multiple modules 
> throughout a
> program. If each instantiation were scoped locally, the 
> template would no
> longer work as expected.

That leads me to speculate that it should be possible to use a 
class template as a sort of singleton. But, because a class 
template (from what I understand currently) needs to be 
instantiated using 'new,' I'm thinking maybe it isn't possible.

Can you (or someone else) clear this up for me, please?

What I have in mind is a template wrapped around a GTK AccelGroup 
that could then be instantiated in the MainWindow as well as 
inside any MenuItem needing a keyboard shortcut assignment.