Re: [PATCH] Desktop icon placement

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Tue, 2006-09-26 at 22:41 +0200, Kobus Retief wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I've been playing around with nautilus for a while, and noticed a little
> glitch -- occasionally when a new file with a long title appears in the
> desktop folder, the icon is placed correctly, but the icon label is
> partially off the desktop window.  I wasn't sure if it was related to my
> font settings or the fact that I'm using nautilus in an FVWM-based
> environment, but I started scratching around in the source nonetheless.
> After a day or two of hacking I had modified the placement algorithm in
> libnautilus-private/nautilus-icon-container.c extensively, ending up
> with (IMHO) a more elegant and simple placement method that gives good
> results.
> 
> Basically, icon placement starts at DESKTOP_INIT_X / DESKTOP_INIT_Y, and
> -- if snapping is enabled -- a grid intersection is anchored at this
> point as well.  The grid snap size is specified with DESKTOP_SNAP_X /
> DESKTOP_SNAP_Y.  Placement of icons is guided by the icon size (i.e.
> the bounding rectangle of _both_ icon pixmap and icon label), and icons
> can be placed as close to the desktop edge as possible without
> overlapping.
> 
> It works well for me, but I'd appreciate an opinion or two re the
> proposed modification.  And, obviously, it'd be very cool if this patch
> is incorporated in nautilus eventually ;-)  Patch is against 2.16.0.

Icon placement is tricky stuff, and we've had various problems with it
in recent history. Unfortunately I don't have time to look at this at
the moment, but perhaps other people can look at it and test it out?

Obviously changes like this can't go into the 2.16 series, as that is
far to risky.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an ungodly native American grifter with a robot buddy named Sparky. She's 
a vivacious cat-loving angel looking for love in all the wrong places. They 
fight crime!