Most other desktop file-managers have an option to automatically tidy up icons on the desktop (leaving them in a tidy, sorted, layout). Thunar doesn't appear to have this; could it be added?
This was added in commit: http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfdesktop/commit/?id=ddc632474a7b4522fd84c5bbb599bf53103dbc07 And is available as of xfdesktop 4.10