Impossible to select files with long names in order with the keyboard

[Miikka-Markus Alhonen]

Selecting files with long filenames using Shift and arrow keys causes nautilus in icon view not to advance sequentially or not to advance at all. Here's a test case:

1) Create a new folder and create empty files with long names in it using the command:

for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40; do touch "abcdef ghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz ABCDEF GHIJKLMN OPQRSTUVWXYZ$i.txt"; done

2) Open the folder in nautilus, hold Shift down and start selecting files by pressing the right arrow key.

Everything goes fine up to the end of the first row. However, when you reach the first file on the second row and press the arrow key again (still holding Shift down), the selection jumps back to the second file of the first row. If you keep on pressing the arrow key, it will repeat the process over and over. So by pressing the right arrow key, you can never reach the end of the folder. As a user, I would expect nautilus to progress sequentially to the second file of the second row and so on up to the end of the folder.

In the example, I used default font settings and 50 % zoom.

Description: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Release: 18.04

nautilus:
  Installed: 1:3.26.3-0ubuntu4
  Candidate: 1:3.26.3-0ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.26.3-0ubuntu4 500
        500 http://mr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.26.3-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-22.24-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-22-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Jun 1 23:06:09 2018
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.preferences' b'search-view' b"'icon-view'"
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'sidebar-width' b'203'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'geometry' b"'888x580+117+77'"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-02-13 (473 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.2)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=C
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-05-31 (1 days ago)
usr_lib_nautilus:

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Indeed, that's still an issue, reported upstream on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/861

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue was already reported there as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/386