I upgraded from a older version of Kubuntu to 20.04 and the upgraded Dolphin now truncates long filenames in the middle with an ellipsis (...) in detail view.

I actually prefer that the names be truncated at the end of the column width. I find that, for the files I look at, more relevant information to figure out which file is which is at the beginning of the name.

Is there a way to change this behavior back? Maybe an option?

An enhancement that would help in either case would be a setting that would show a tooltip with the complete name for any file that got truncated.

edit: I'm using Dolphin Version 19.12.3

edit2: I just noticed that this truncation in the middle is not just filenames, it's every column, Owner, Type, Modified. And in every case I'd personally rather the truncation happen at the end rather than in the middle. (eg the type "plain text document" in a shortened column now reads "plai...ment", truncated at the end it would be "plain text".)

Weird, I don't remember ever having seen this, but I certainly can't reproduce this behaviour here, using Dolphin 20.12.3. Truncation is always at the end, and the tooltip shows the complete file name and information. Maybe check your Dolphin settings again.

BTW: your OS icon shows Linux Mint, not Kubuntu...

Thanks for pointing out my OS icon, I doubt I would have noticed for quite a while.

I had to create a new user with KDE Identity to log in, so I thought my old user was completely gone but I guess not. I used Linux MInt KDE until it was discontinued and then switched to Kubuntu 18.04 and now 20.04. I've changed my OS icon to Kubuntu.

Here's what I see:
[edited to change img from google drive to imgur]


Maybe this isn't a Dolphin issue and it's actually related to Plasma or Application style or the Global Theme setting? I admit I'm not always clear on everything those settings will affect. I'm not a fan of the monochrome icons and some of the other Breeze settings so I usually try to change those to Oxygen and get back the oxygen icons and widgets.

I appreciate any insights and help.

Please don't use Google Drive for sharing, use a free image hosting website accessible directly, like imgur.

Adding info to the FAQ about using imgur vs google drive and about the limitation of images to be 720px wide would be helpful. I did look in the FAQ first but it only said an image had to be publicly accessible.

Anyway I've updated my post with an image I added to imgur, thanks for the advice.

mlippert wrote:Adding info to the FAQ about using imgur vs google drive and about the limitation of images to be 720px wide would be helpful. I did look in the FAQ first but it only said an image had to be publicly accessible...

Every subforum can have its own limitations, this depends on the moderators of said forum. Some allow images larger than 720 px, although those are the exception.
The FAQ states "you must link to an image stored on a publicly accessible web server" which google drive definitely is not, sharing an image there doesn't make it accessible from a forum.

Back to your problem: I have no idea why you have this truncation, I have never seen this on my computer. But then I usually don't use that many columns either, but use the information panel on the right if I want to see more about a specific file. I see only truncation from the end of the file name. Make sure you have no other dots in the file name other than the one at the end, though, as the dot still is a reserved character only to be used as a separator of file name and extension.

Thanks. Knowing you didn't see the same behavior, I looked at Dolphin in a clean Kubuntu 20.04 install in a VM. Same behavior.

Then I tried a Neon VM which had Dolphin ver 20.12.0. That truncation behavior was much better.

So good to know my "issue" has already been addressed in a later version of Dolphin. I just have to wait until Kubuntu 20.04 backports it.

The better truncation behaviour looked like:


The full file names are:

• 'this is a file. which is pretty long. and is a test.txt'
• 'this is a file. which is pretty long. and is a test.txt and longer'
• 'this is a file. which is pretty long. and is a test.txt and longer.jepg'

What I determined is that now if there are 4 or fewer characters after the last period ('.') in the filename, it will truncate in front of that, otherwise it truncates at the end. And Type and Modified values (and I assume all the others I didn't check) now truncate at the end as well.

I actually like this filename truncation heuristic, it's helpful!

it is highly unlikely it will be back-ported to Kubuntu 20.04, as that would men to update Qt which is not going to happen.

FWIW: there is no reason for a single users to stick to LTS versions, those are meant for corporate and multi-deployment surroundings where upgrading takes a lot of time. Kubuntu 20.10 is out since last October and 21.04 is around the corner, you should consider an upgrade...