There have been some changes to the variable editor (V.E.) that make the autofit feature (i.e., adjust the column widths of table data models) no longer continuously applied with processing.  It has become more manually driven.

Let's call autofit applied to the whole table "global autofit", or "global optimal width".

Let's call autofit applied to a single column "column autofit", or "column optimal width".

There has been a discussion of ways to implement these actions here:

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?53005#comment11
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?53005#comment12
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?53005#comment13
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?53005#comment14
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?53005#comment15
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?53005#comment16

To summaraze, with the recent changes, global optimal width occurs just once when the variable is opened in the V.E.  There is currently a way to activate column optimal width, which is to double click on the line that separates columns.

There should be an additional means of doing the column optimal width, which is to open the right-mouse-button-click context meno and select a new option "Optimal Width".

An additional consideration would be a global autofit (drop-down) button on the V.E. toolbar (i.e., replicates the first-time open action), but let's keep that as a separate possible changeset.