[telepathy] [Bug 318660] make height of the input text box configurable

Thomas Pfeiffer colomar at autistici.org
Sun Apr 21 15:32:10 BST 2013


https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318660

--- Comment #8 from Thomas Pfeiffer <colomar at autistici.org> ---
It's not really accessibility, but discoverability. Two lines make it clear
that it's a multi-line text field, whereas an initial single line suggests that
it is just a single line field, like in the Chat Plasmoid for example.
This is not a very strong case, though. People should be fine with one line,
two just communicate  "Your message length is not limited" more clearly.
For me, both variants are okay, none of them should be a problem for any user.
Yes, Pidgin introduced a setting, but that doesn't mean it's necessary.

It's not about the effort of putting in a setting: It's about taking a more
conservative stance on adding new settings in general. We do not want
completely unconfigurable applications like Empathy, but we don't want the
configuration monstrosities of the KDE3 age either. Some KDE SC applications
and some workspace parts are already dangerously close to these times again,
but I'm glad KTp is not moving in that direction.

That said, probably nobody would die if we introduced that setting, either. The
initial height of an auto-expanding box is just not important enough to warrant
a setting in my opinion.

I agree with David that auto-expand and a splitter do not mix well at all. This
is because a splitter suggests "direct manipulation", i.e. if I drag the
splitter to position X, I expect it to stay there instead of being pushed up
automatically when I type more text. Neither Kopete nor Skype have an
auto-expanding box, so for them it works fine.

So from my perspective, the options are (in order of preference, 1 is most
preferred)
1. Two lines, no setting, auto expand
2. One line, no setting, auto expand
3. Setting for initial number of lines, auto expand
4. Splitter to set height, no auto expand

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