Created attachment 8619 Idea for permissions layout In file properties permissions tabs i think the elements are to close together. It dont look so much as 3 sections (owner, group, others) like it could. So its not clear that the access dropdown lists is connected to the element above it. I would like if owner, group, and others section was more clearly separated. Maybe move the permissions dropdowns to the right and remove "access:" text for a more cleaner layout. See attached image. I dont know if this can give problems with long owner/group names. Else maybe just add more space between the 3 sections so its more clear what belongs to what.
I agree on your considerations. Though I would not put 3 elements in one line, since it will for sure expand the complete settings GUI for long user names / for some languages. I would suggest to put the label "user" / "group" / "other" in a separate line before, and possibly add separators between the sections. I dont have time to work on this currently. Though I can review/apply patches. So please take a try for yourself, if you can ! The file of interest is thunar-permissions-chooser.cpp, the method "thunar_permissions_chooser_init".
*** Bug 15556 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Theo Linkspfeifer referenced this bugreport in commit 209a3fc232ca148db8a43f7c4693e022a2b2d3f9 Improve layout of Permissions tab (Bug #15557) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/commit?id=209a3fc232ca148db8a43f7c4693e022a2b2d3f9
Thanks for the patch ! Applied it to master The patch does not restructure the whole GUI, instead it just adds another "Access" label and some space between the sections.