Never shrink the last 3 columns and never scroll horizontally - shrink (ellipsize) the folder name column instead
Remixing my original bug at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=721377 into a more actual version:
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Please merge !17 so that I can reclaim half of my screen's real estate, I don't need the graphs pane, in 99% of cases. The graphs in the sidebar are really cool to look at, but they're secondary to the treeview and not strictly necessary. The treeview contents should be prioritized to avoid horizontal scrolling.
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Please make the treeview figure out the sizing automagically (see below).
This is something that has bothered me for a looooong time: even maximized on a 1920x* screen, Baobab eventually creates horizontal scrolling and thus prevents me from seeing the entirety of the treeview information at once. And typically, I don't care about the folder name that much, what I care about is the Size column. I want that column to ALWAYS be visible and never shrunk nor scrolled out. Horizontal scrolling is my worst enemy, and it hurts information discoverability for non-geeks.
To reproduce, just drill down to some place on your filesystem where you have some rather long folder name. You can test by creating one named:
"Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerk"
To have an automagic treeview that I don't have to fight all the time as a user, this is what I'd recommend:
- Make the Size, Contents and Modified columns auto-sized and non-resizeable. They're always the shortest columns anyway.
- Set the "Folder" column to autosize, or to automatically ellipsize long folder names with Pango if needed (if it runs out of horizontal space).
- For long folder names that don't fit, show the folder name in a GtkTooltip when the mouse hovers over it.
- Disable horizontal scrolling completely on the "scrolled_window" GtkScrolledWindow inside the result_page.
No horizontal scrolling = no more important information being off-screen. Über-long folder names can be shown in the tooltips anyway.