Narrow spacing of icons in Files affects file names

[Ari Torhamo]

When I upgraded to Ubuntu 16.10 beta a few days ago, horizontal distance between icons in Files and on the desktop got much smaller. Because of this there's less room horizontally for the file names, and many words got their last letters cut off to the next row. In many file names full rows now alternate with rows of only a couple of cut off letters. Name fields with longer file names also look disproportionately narrow and tall now. I think the spacing should be changed back to what it was, or at least it should be user selectable.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.10
Package: nautilus 1:3.20.3-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.8.0-20.22-generic 4.8.0
Uname: Linux 4.8.0-20-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.3-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Oct 8 04:04:55 2016
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.preferences' b'thumbnail-limit' b'uint64 4294967295'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'sidebar-width' b'265'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'maximized' b'true'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-visible-columns' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified']"
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-column-order' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'date_accessed', 'owner', 'group', 'permissions', 'mime_type', 'where', 'date_modified_with_time']"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-03-27 (194 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Beta amd64 (20160323)
ProcEnviron:
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANGUAGE=fi
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
usr_lib_nautilus: gnome-terminal 3.20.2-1ubuntu5

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[dino99 (9d9)]

@Ari

as a workaround, i've found my way using the tweak tool -> fonts -> size

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

@ Sebastian Bacher: I found an existing bug report about this problem at Gnome Bugzilla, and I added my comment to it:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745968
The report and the latest comment are a year and a half old, but the bug is marked as new. I guess it's better not to expect a quick patch.

@ dino99: Thanks for the workaround, dino99. It alleviated the problem somewhat. It would help more if I'd decrease the font size further, but the text would get too small then.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[BronsonMathews (bronsonmathews)]

adding screenshots for comparison, this affects me too...

16.04 looks fine:

[BronsonMathews (bronsonmathews)]

16.10 is broken:

[cesarurania (cesarurania)]

Same problem here.

[Michael MacEachern (maceach-b)]

Yea, this is pretty much unusable, and I may reinstall 16.04. I don't know who thought this was a good idea but they need to be smacked upside the head. ;)