List views start with too-narrow name column

[Murray Cumming]

Binary package hint: nautilus

In Ubuntu Feisty (and not before, I think), when using non-browser mode, and using list views by default, new windows are shown with very little space for the first (name) column.

It's very annoying to resize the column each time I open a new folder, just so I can see more than a couple of characters of the name.

ProblemType: Bug
Date: Thu Mar 1 20:10:34 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux murrayc-desktop 2.6.20-9-generic #2 SMP Mon Feb 26 03:01:44 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Michael Gratton (mjog)]

I can confirm this is a problem in Herd 5 but not in Edgy and prior.

[Lambros Lambrou (lambros)]

I was just about to report this as a bug, too! If I size my Name column properly, and browse some other folders in the same window, it remembers the width I set. But if I select "View as Icons", and then switch back to "View as List", it forgets the width!

I tried creating a new "test" user account, and switching to it. The problem does not seem to occur for this new user. So it looks like my own user-settings have somehow got into a corrupt state.

[Lambros Lambrou (lambros)]

It seems this bug is not apparent when default settings are used (such as when creating a new "test" user). But if I log on as the new user, and set the List View to show more columns, the bug appears.

A workaround, for now, is to:

Open the Nautilus file browser.
Go to Edit -> Preferences
Click on the "List Columns" tab
Untick all boxes, except for the top four - these are ticked by default for a new user.

I find that the problem only occurs if I have too many columns enabled for viewing. I think Nautilus is supposed to show all the selected columns, and display a horizontal scrollbar when they are all too wide to fit into the window. Instead, Nautilus is shrinking the "Name" column to take up the slack. Nautilus is not enforcing a minimum-width for this column.

And I concur with Mike Gratton - this problem has only surfaced in the latest version of Feisty. I've been using Ubuntu since it began with Warty, and have never seen this problem before until now.

Hope this is helpful.

[Michael Gratton (mjog)]

Thanks for the tip Lambros, but I am already using the default four columns and this is still a problem for me.

[Murray Cumming (murrayc)]

Here is a screenshot to show how awful this is. I feel this should be a show-stopped for Feisty because it is likely to affect so many people.

This is what you get for each window after switching to non-browse mode (the GNOME default, if not Ubuntu's) and choosing view as list for new windows. You don't need to choose any different columns to get this bug.

[Lambros Lambrou (lambros)]

Ouch! I see what you mean, looking at that screenshot. I didn't notice this problem with default new-user settings, but I think that's because I'm using a fairly-high display resolution: 1152x864. Looks to me like that screenshot was taken using a lower resolution setting (assuming Nautilus chooses a fixed percentage of the display for the initial window-size). If my theory is right, people with low-res displays will be worst affected by this bug.

[Murray Cumming (murrayc)]

I'm using 1280x1024, which I think is fairly average.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416628

[Murray Cumming (murrayc)]

This is fixed now.

[Frederic Parrenin (parrenin-frederic)]

For me, there is still a problem with column size in feisty: it is not remembered.
To reproduce the problem:
- open a folder with list view
- resize one of the column size
- go to the parent folder
- come back to the first folder
=> the column size has been reseted.
This is a very annoying bug, I hope it will be fixed soon.

[Murray Cumming (murrayc)]

Yes, I guess this might be a side-effect of the fix. Could you file a new upstream bug?

[Murray Cumming (murrayc)]

Actually, because I'm not sure that this is an upstream bug yet, I submitted another Ubuntu bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/94014

[Paul Betts (paul-betts)]

I've made a better patch to fix this issue more thoroughly. The problem is that a lot of column space simply is unallocated (belongs to *no* column) because the columns weren't being properly resized.

I've posted a patch at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=410361 to fix this as well as make the name column even bigger by default - this seems to make it wide enough for most filenames on my machine while not hiding the Date column in the default Nautilus view.

[x (xk2c-deactivatedaccount)]

ere is a semi complete list of duplicates:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/93381
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/94014
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/89031

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=422563

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419343
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=410361
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416628
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318725

[x (xk2c-deactivatedaccount)]

FYI:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419343#c5

[x (xk2c-deactivatedaccount)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/93381/comments/39

[P Cantwall (p-cantwell)]

This bug is back in Ubuntu 14.04