Nautilus (list view) column widths change dynamically on alt-tab, lags on large folders

[Julien-Charles Lévesque]

The problem seems to be that nautilus re-parses the list of files in a folder after an alt-tab to resize dynamically the column widths, e.g., the name column will be made wider if there is a file with a very large name. What happens is that if you have a large folder, upon a window redraw (with alt-tab for example), the column width for 'Name' is set to a small value, and then increases when a larger file name is found. This produces a weird effect with the columns changing sizes multiple times - not particularly nice, and I believe will be much more problematic on very large folders. Isn't there some way of caching the previously computed value on this same folder and only refreshing it once, thus making it invisible to the user?

Running updated Ubuntu 12.10 64 bits, nautilus package version 1:3.5.90.really.3.4.2-0ubuntu4

I witnessed this in a folder containing only 71 files. There was a file with a considerably longer file name at the end of the folder (e.g. twice as long, 31 characters vs 15 characters in the first files)

[Julien-Charles Lévesque (jclevesque)]

Just saw that this column resizing also happens when I right-click in the file list.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Tomas Vanderka (tomas-vanderka)]

Simple left-click on the window title, or even losing window focus is enough to trigger this "column resizing".

[ladariha (riha-vladimir)]

or simply switch windows between e.g. browser and nautilus using Alt+Tab...

[joehahn (joehahn)]

It also occurs when using any font. I thought it may have been caused by using pcf/bitmap fonts, but this is not the case. This dynamic column re-sizing does not occur after upgrading to Nautilus 3.6.

[Karl Kropf (ksk-clara)]

[corrected for typo] Adding this here as Bug #1073913 was closed down because a fix is supposed to be in the update (3.6.3) but see below.

My original workaround was to install 3.6.3 (on a fresh install of 12.10 - the package in synaptic is 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1). It was not a problem at first but I now find (after a recent update) that the problem affects this version as well. The resizing occurs in the following situations:
- switching windows with the alt+tab
- bringing the window up with the launcher
- moving the window with the title bar
- left clicking items in the list
- using the global menu (home folder)