Keyboard Shortcut for Create New Document

[vni.jamie]

I'd like to make a keyboard shortcut similar to ctrl+shift+n that will create a new document in the active folder.

I was hoping I could just add something to they keyboard shortcuts in preferences along the lines of

ctrl+alt+n = touch {$current_dir}/newfile

However I'm not sure what to put in place of {$current_dir} or if there is any system variable I could use there at all.

[Jim_Nora]

Would using a single '.' work? At a bash prompt '.' refers to the current directory, and '..' refers to the parent directory.
Perhaps
ctrl+alt+n = touch ./newfile
would work in this setting.