Fixing distribution of items across columns of QGIS Legend

Question

This question relates to a previous question I posted as QGIS Legend - distribution of items across columns

I've created a map and in print composer I've added a legend with ten items, which I want to break across five columns evenly. I've specified the number of columns and checked Split Layers, but the end result is three columns of two items, one column of three items, and a final column of one item:

When I originally posted a question about this, @Joseph replied, suggesting I adjust the column count setting to 6, which worked perfectly, and has continued to work until a couple of months ago, when suddenly the legend items have become skewed again.

Can anyone offer any further advice on how to get the columns to display evenly?

Answer 1

This does appear to be a bug but I think I stumbled across a work around. If you change the Space between symbols to less then 1 mm it will not do the weird bump to 3 and 1 in a column instead of 2 thing. Here it is at 1mm And here it is at .99mm

I assume you already figured out that you need to hide your item and group titles and just use your main properties title to get it to work.

Not sure if this is helpful but there seems to be a relationship between Symbol Height and Space Between Symbols. When I have 12 items in 6 columns (2per column) 4mm/1mm doesn't work but 4mm/.99mm does as does 4.01mm/1mm. You can find similar threshold relationships as you go up in multiples of 4mm and 1mm. For example 8mm/2mm, 12mm/3mm, 16mm/4mm, 20mm/5mm. When I have 12 items in 4 columns (3per) it is 4mm/2mm 12 items in 3 columns (4per) = 4mm/4mm 16 items in 6 columns (3per) is the same as 12 items in 6 columns so it seems to be the number of columns not the number of items.

Answer 2

This is a bug that has recently been fixed. In the upcoming QGIS 3.16, the legend columns should all be the same height.