You need to be more specific.

Icon view, list view or both?

Do you mean the upper left corner of the entire Nautilus window, or
some subset of it (like the pane containing the list/icon view)? I'm
asking all these questions 'cause I can't duplicate it, but I'm not
sure I'm looking for the right thing.

Icon View.  I haven't tried with the list view (and I don't have a
GNOME 2 setup at hand right now).

And if I recall correctly, the pointer actually moves to the
upper-left corner of the view (the pane), not of the whole window.

I can't duplicate this with current cvs; please reopen and redescribe
it if you are still seeing it, ettore. Thanks.

It's as simple as right click -> rename.  The pointer warps to the
upper left corner of the Nautilus window as soon as I select the command.

I suspect this is related to the other bug I have -- when I click on a
workspace in the workspace applet, my pointer warps to the upper-left
corner of the window that has the focus.

Sounds like Yet Another Broken Sawfish Misfeature to me.

Ah, yes. I'm testing metacity ATM; that would probably explain why I'm
not seeing it. Reassigning then. and I think the terminology is 'warp'. :)

which version of sawfish, nautilus, etc?

what sawfish focus options?

archaeopteryx:~> rpm -q sawfish2 nautilus2
sawfish2-2.0.pre1.0.200204212122-0.snap.ximian.1
nautilus2-1.1.12.0.200204212122-0.snap.ximian.1

There are about 1 gazillion options in there and hence I have no clue
which one affects this braindead behavior.  ;-)

I had "Warp mouse pointer to window when temporarily selected" or
something turned on (why? no mouse pointer warping should ever happen
ever -- no sane GUI does that), but turning it off didn't change this
specific behavior.

actually, that option doesn't exist in the most recent cvs version

also in that verson, _all_ pointer warping is disabled without a
hidden configuration variable being set

probably fixed...