Please change the 2.4.0 input field's resize behaviour

[Mark Scott]

Hi Etan,

thanks for the reply.

Etan Reisner wrote:

>> I find that the change introduced in 2.4.0 to the input field's resize
>> behaviour makes using Pidgin very, very awkward indeed.  I regularly
>> send multi-line messages and being able to see the outgoing message in
>> its entirety is a desirable feature for me.  Frankly, I'm struggling to
>> see any benefit at all for users in the new implementation.
> 
> Do you really regularly send IMs that are longer than four full lines?

Yes, very often.  I've got several years of logs I can analyze if you'd 
like hard stats.  There will be a mixture of paragraphs that flow, 
unbroken, to more than four full lines and messages containing anywhere 
from several to many explicit linefeeds.

> Are
> these IMs something other than normal text (i.e. code snippets)? Are these
> longer IMs routinely five lines, six lines, some larger number, unbounded?

Messages I exchange with colleagues run from one character to, I expect, 
a dozen lines.  Code snippets, exception stacktraces, lists of 
instructions, XML, problem descriptions etc..

They're ultimately bounded by the MSN protocol's limit on message size. 
  I don't know what that limit might be but do hit it occasionally.

Looking at my current Pidgin 2.3.1 window I can see I have 12 lines 
visible in the input field and 40 lines of conversation visible (with, 
as it happens, 132 chars per line).

> Were you really happier having to either constantly resize the input area
> to accomodate these larger messages and then back down again to a normal
> size, or happier with an average of wasted space?

Really much happier with what you consider "wasted space".  I wouldn't 
have filed a report otherwise ;-)

We clearly have different ideas on what's "normal".  I never found 
myself constantly resizing anything.  Hardly ever, in fact.  I guess 
that suggests 10 to 12 lines is, for me, enough to give sufficient 
context to whatever I'm currently typing.

> Is there some middle ground that would serve your purpose and yet provide
> the benefits of the cureent automatically resizing input area.

IMHO your premise is flawed.  I don't see any benefit at all in an 
auto-resizing area.  To me, it's too small and the auto-resizing is 
distracting and irritating.  YMMV.

Regards.

-- 
Mark Scott
mark at codebrewer.com