Stop thumbnail pane fro constantly repositioning itself

[jefferysmall]

Setup (please complete the following information): Xubuntu 22.04.4 Geeqie 2.2+git20240207-5547f6ae GTK3

Describe the bug Geeqie is open on one screen displaying many image thumbnails while I edit images on the adjacent screen using GIMP. [See attached screenshot] Periodically, geeqie repositions the thumbnail list moving things around. This makes sense if an image file in the current directory is deleted or updated, especially if, as in this case, the coast_78 or coast_79 file get touched and the thumbnail is redisplayed full view. But this readjustment happens at many other times, even when no file is being touched. It's as if geeqie were doing some periodic internal housekeeping.

This is most annoying when I'm at the bottom of the thumbnail list and there is a single thumbnail in the bottom row. Geeqie keeps moving the thumbnail list and hiding the last image (tour_boat_01) with the previous row (fort_sao_joao) positioned at the bottom. I'm not sure why this keeps happening. I usually try to size the vertical height of the thumbnail pane to show a set of full images, but if the images at the top are truncated as shown here, could that be triggering something? When I'm working on the last few images in a directory I'm constantly fighting geeqie for display control of those thumbnails.

In any event, I would greatly appreciate it if the thumbnail window would just remain in a static position unless it simply must be updated due to a file deletion or the updating of a partially shown thumbnail that needs to be fully displayed.

Thanks.

To reproduce I've described the conditions to the best of my ability above. I'm usually working in the GIMP window when this happens, so I'm not directly interacting with geeqie.

Is it possible that GIMP is doing something to the directory, like saving a backup for example, and geeqie sees the directory being touched and reformats the thumbnails? If it's something like this, geeqie should be fixed to ignore operation that don't directly affect the thumbnail display.

Expected behavior Just want thumbnails to remain positioned as shown.

Screenshots

[caclark]

Go to Edit/Preferences/General and un-check Refresh On File Change.

I am not suggesting this as a solution, and I think this is likely to be involved in the problem, but it would be good to have that verified.

[I have in mind that the check frequency is 10 seconds]

[jefferysmall]

FYI, I was just scrolling through some pix with geeqie. GIMP was open but not in use. I just saw the thumbnail pane readjust itself when nothing was being done to any of the files. I have no idea what triggered it.

I will now uncheck Refresh On File Change but I've done this before. What behavior are you looking for -- halting all non-manual changes to the pane or something more limited? Happy to report back.

[jefferysmall]

I've been using geeqie for a while now while I edit more files and yes, nothing updates or changes for the image or thumbnails until I press R to refresh. So the problem does seem to be related to that feature. Of course, it's a different pain to refresh manually, but I hope you can track down a middle-ground here to allow auto-refresh with a more static thumbnail list. Regards.

[jefferysmall]

One more related annoyance with the thumbnail pane jumping around.

Normally, when you click on a thumbnail it is selected and the displayed image is updated. However, if the thumbnail is at the bottom of the pane and is not 100% displayed -- even if only a very small part of the thumbnail label is below the bottom of the pane -- then Geeqie jumps the thumbnail to the top of the pane, but the target thumbnail is not selected and the image is not updated. Now you have to look around for the desired target thumbnail. It's extra confusing because the currently selected image (assuming it was the one just before the target) has now been scrolled out of the pane so you have no visual indicator of where you are.

This happens whether Refresh On File Change is on or off.