... aAnd now also if you have the repository initialized outside SmartGit and do the first commit.

It depends on what state the file has and what kind of view options of the Files table are selected.

Please try changing the low-level property branch.replaceInvalidCharsWith.

SmartGit just uses the system font. Is the font large enough for you in other applications, e.g. Windows Explorer?

Please describe your full workflow, why and what exactly you need.

As of now only 6 of ~x0.000 users voted for this feature, so it doesn't look really important to us.

SmartGit 21.2 is available as M1 bundle: https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/preview/

Yes, this line is gone because the unified diff solves this purpose.

For a long time SmartGit has a combined view showing working tree and index files in one table. There, staged files are kept selected after the state change.