Nautilus desktop icon placement/keep aligned

[Andreas Wetzel]

Hi

i wonder if anybody else sees a problem with the way nautilus (mis)places
icons on the desktop, when the 'keep aligned' feature is selected?

One thing that has always bothered me since I'm using Gnome, is that the first
column of the icon grid starts approximately 1 inch from the left screen edge,
which IMHO is a way too big left margin. 8-12 pixels would totally be enough.
Ideally the icon grid offsets would be configurable, even if only by using
gconf-editor.

Today i had some time to play around a bit more with the "keep aligned"
feature. When having all icons aligned nicely in a vertical column, then
logging out and back in, icons appear anywhere but aligned to the icon grid.
I mean WTF? Only de-selecting "keep aligned" from the menu and then selecting
it again will have the icons eventually snap back to their grid positions.
Until the next time you log out of cause.

Another odd 'feature' is that the horizontal grid lines are set every 20 pixel
or so, allowing icons to be placed overlapping.

I really do not intend to sound negative, and Nautilus surely is a great piece
of software, but this is an elementary feature of a desktop environment that
even windows gets (mostly) right somehow. If you start a Google search for
the term:

Nautilus "keep aligned"


You find bug reports and other stuff related to that subject dating back to
2003. I wonder if the Nautilus developers are aware that the "keep aligned"
feature does not work as expected, to put it mildly.

Kind regards, Andreas

-- 
Keep it icy man.
I don't want to end up a corpse before my time because you were daydreaming.