@Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) I have removed the RNA changes as requested, and I have updated the revision to use the Arcanist tool instead of using a diff file. You should be able to apply this now.

I have tested this change personally, and there are no regressions. This is what the updated preferences UI looks like for anyone interested, specifically the Navigation preferences UI.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to make a patch.

This looks like it's reverting parts of rB7fc60bff14a6241c4a51cbc57b93774a90a0ea13.
These columns with headers are a standard layout element used in many places.
There is an explicit trade-off between vertical height and visual complexity, but these layouts are consistent and follow Blender's current design.
I don't think the design or layout goals have changed recently. So personally I would close this patch.

In D14287#382539, @Hans Goudey (HooglyBoogly) wrote:

First of all, thanks for taking the time to make a patch.

This looks like it's reverting parts of rB7fc60bff14a6241c4a51cbc57b93774a90a0ea13.
These columns with headers are a standard layout element used in many places.
There is an explicit trade-off between vertical height and visual complexity, but these layouts are consistent and follow Blender's current design.
I don't think the design or layout goals have changed recently. So personally I would close this patch.

I don’t personally agree that I’m rolling back parts of that commit — that commit moved over from the old grid flow layout to columns, all I'm doing with this one is converting a few preferences from the column approach to a row-based approach to cleanup the UI, because I personally don't see it useful to have the now modified preferences be separated. It makes sense for headings with more than two preferences, but for preferences with short names and/or only two options it doesn't really make sense. That's why I only changed the couple of preferences I did, because I didn't see it useful nor beneficial to change / modify the other preferences.

You can see the row layout being used in Keymap -> Preferences, where Alt Click Tool Prompt and Alt Tool Access are next to each other.

The current layout has the advantage that similar settings are clearly linked to the header. "Invert Zoom Direction" for example work better both visually and are easier to toggle at once.

With this patch applied the buttons that aren't right next to the heading seems out of place (on their own). And while these is could be acceptable, adding additional items wont work well. Also with translations text may be cramped and not fit.

So I think the current layout can be kept.

that commit moved over from the old grid flow layout to columns, all I'm doing with this one is converting a few preferences from the column approach to a row-based approach to cleanup the UI

That commit moved specifically to columns instead of rows because that design was discussed and chosen at the time. Among other things, it benefits organization of items, makes them easier to scan, and simplifies spacing for translations like Campbell mentioned.
Further, consistency with existing UI guidelines followed elsewhere is important.
For those reasons, I'll close this patch, like I mentioned above.

Oops, looks like I reloaded a bit too late.