Why pressure featuers you like your self?

[Etan Reisner]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 01:50:02PM -0800, mail at millerm.com wrote:
<snip>
> I don't expect Pidgin to bend to my, or anyone's, wishes. However, to me a
> reversion to the old behavior makes the most sense. I absolutely abhor
> with a passion with which I cannot even quantify any change that:
>
> 1) Resizes anything on my screen without my permission, including, indeed,
> input text areas.

Fine.

> 2) Takes away a feature that was, largely, the very reason I was using the
> IM client in the first place.

Understandable.

> 3) Ignores the wishes of largely 50% of the user base or more.

Also understandable, but in no way even close to the percentage of the
pidgin user base negatively affected by this. How do I know? Because for
it to be the case the pidgin user base could be nore larger than 100
people. Which, I trust we can all agree is in no way the actual size of
the user base.

> Why does this new feature bite the big 'un:
>
> 1) I frequently type quite large instant messages to a wide variety of
> people. My boss. My girlfriend. A variety of friends. Just looking over my
> logs, my average message takes up about seven lines. Why do I want to
> scroll to see and check what I am typing? Why should I have to when it
> worked perfectly before?

So your problem here would be fixed by having the maximum line count
raised, good thing that's been suggested and is planned.

> 2) I don't want stuff flying all over my screen. If I wanted that, I'd
> turn Compiz on, or play Quake. I want things to be where I put them only.

So this problem would be solved by being able to pick a miminum input area
line count other than 2? Good thing I suggested that too.

> 3) In the situations where I do want a miniscule text window, unintuitive
> behavior, and text flying all over my screen, even under the old client
> (well, similar), I could just shrink my text input window. This is why the
> old way makes the most sense.

This would be solved by my modified suggestion (not presented on the
mailing list so far I believe) of allowing for the initial size to be a
percentage, would it not?

> 4) The window looks very unbalanced with a bunch of text on top and a
> little that I can not read easily or check in the bottom. The aesthetics
> of it alone are terrible.

Again, percentage solves this.

> 5) And, the most important reason to change it back is that it's what I,
> and many other users, prefer.

This is exactly not a reason, you even said so yourself in the opening of
this email. "I don't expect Pidgin to bend to my, or anyone's, wishes."

> I'd be willing to donate as much money as it will take to get this feature
> reverted. What's the going price? That's a serious offer, by the way.

It isn't a question of cost, the exact lines you need to change in the
source have been posted to this list already, as has a first (incorrect)
attempt at a fix and a correction email as well.

The issue is the merits of a reversion versus the merits of fixing the
current behaviour, assuming a fix is possible, and so far it largely
appears to be possible at least in theory, whether the code will work out
has yet to be seen.

    -Etan