I'm not questioning the placement of the columns (I choose it that way), just its height size that should be close to 3 non long text fields not the actual 9 fields (around 13 text lines)
In Edit metadata (single) layout the custom columns are ordered by column header name and with the long text fields at the bottom (your screen).
Note: the fileds "Long text, like comments" but with the option "Interpret this column as" to be "Short text like a title" behave differently from the ones with HTML ou markup)
You can specify a different order in Preferences/Tweaks / like
Code:
metadata_edit_custom_column_order = [u'#pages',
u'#genre',
u'#read']
and that's my scenario... And I do prefer the single edit screen for some specific task, just its not truly improved.
End note: Thank you on the hint for the "Column icon with No Text" but how can I do it?!
(found it ... Look and feel / Column icons)