I think the Subject line puts the question pretty well. I'm one who's accustomed to seeing information along with my pictures, and I don't mind if it "hangs around." Most of the time, I view pictures I've annotated myself, just to see if I missed any basic or essential metadata tags or labels on picture X or Y.

I come from a Mac OS/OS X background, and on both I was a big fan and longtime (through at least 4 versions and more maintenance upgrades than I can count) user of Thorsten Lemke's GraphicConverter. When I was strongly persuaded to switch to Windows and (x86) Linux by the failure of my PowerMac G4's power supply, I settled on XnView by Pierre Gougelet, and my second choice for slideshows -- manual or timed -- was/is Skiljan's IrfanView. All of the above allow one to display the file name of an image in their full-screein or slideshow modes, along with whatever meta information one chooses to show.

I find the auto-hide of GwenView's information bar/quick thumb bar combination not at all to my liking. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I figured I'd ask if there was some way of tweaking a preference, or a config file or two, to get it (the utility bar) to remain visible without constantly having to move my mouse pointer to the upper-left corner.

And for the amusement of those who often come across threads I start here on LQ Forums, there's just one thing I'd like to add: "Look, Ma, no emphases!"

BZT