pidgin preferences window is too tall for netbooks, cannot see close/cancel buttons, cannot be resized to fit

[Zorael]

Binary package hint: pidgin

Netbooks, such as the ever-popular eeePC series, Aspire Ones, MSI Winds etc, all suffer from being limited to lower resolutions. On such machines, some dialog windows are actually too tall (i.e. have a too large height factor) to actually *fit* the screen. Pidgin's Preferences window is one such.

On my Advent 4211 (rebranded MSI Wind) I can reach a max resolution of 1024x600. Take those 600px and subtract some more for panels, and there's not a whole lot left. The window can not be resized, so I have to tab and guess; hope I hit something that will save my changes instead of undoing them.

Alt-dragging the window upwards works *if* you're not running Desktop Effects. The standard "Normal" setting you end up with in live cd environments as well as after having installed makes the window title stay within the bounds of the desktop area. With netbooks often having Intel graphics chipsets, and as such desktop effects from the get-go (due to accelerated open drivers), they need to *know* to go disable effects to be able to change Pidgin's preferences.

        $ apt-cache policy pidgin
        pidgin:
          Installed: 1:2.5.2-0ubuntu1
          Candidate: 1:2.5.2-0ubuntu1
          Version table:
         *** 1:2.5.2-0ubuntu1 0
                500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
                100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Eduardo Cereto (dudus)]

I think this may be a dup for LP #295085

[Ying-Chun Liu (paulliu)]

In the process of developing the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, with the smaller screens of netbooks in mind, I wrote some patches to make pidgin work with less pixels.

There are three places which make pidgin over 1024x600.
1. Preference window
2. Account Manager when choose protocol to "SILC"
3. Add Buddy Pounce by right clicking on a user.

Now, these patches originally used hard-coded changes, because we were only targeting smaller screens. But I've modified it to check the resolution dynamically.

I'll attach the patches below. Thanks.

[Ying-Chun Liu (paulliu)]

Account Manager patch

[Ying-Chun Liu (paulliu)]

Add Buddy pounce patch

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Paul: do you think you can forward the patch to Upstream too? http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/TipsForBugReports

[Ying-Chun Liu (paulliu)]

Dear Daniel,

I've linked it to upstream bug and attach the patches.

Thanks.

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

Sebastian/mpt: We need your guidance on whether the solution is acceptable by upstream or any laternatives you might have.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Note that I just wrote up some UI proposals to get some feedback from pidgin upstream. These were the result of a chat I had with Paul about possible no-scrollbar solutions.

http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/2009-February/007538.html

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Upstream dup'd their bug to a different one in their trac system.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is there any reason why you add the scrollbars at all in the non small screen usecase? rather than having the policy change you could only use scrollbars when required to avoid having a frame due to the widget no?

[David Mandala (davidm)]

This is very important to Notebook Remix so I've changed the priority and asked stevenk to assist.

[Ying-Chun Liu (paulliu)]

Updated patch.
Only add scrolled window when screen height is <= 600

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Looks fine to me for a jaunty hack, but just adding scrollbars is probably not a solution that upstream will accept. But it's an unintrusive patch, let's do that for jaunty.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Tentatively assigning to Steve

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package pidgin - 1:2.5.4-2ubuntu2

---------------
pidgin (1:2.5.4-2ubuntu2) jaunty; urgency=low

  * 60_1024x600_gtkaccount.c.patch: Add scrolled bars into account dialog
    when screen height is less than 600. (LP: #305019)
  * 60_1024x600_gtkpounce.c.patch: Add scrolled bars into pounce window when
    screen height is less than 600
  * 60_1024x600_gtkprefs.c.patch: Add scrolled bars into preference window when
    screen height is less than 600

 -- Ying-Chun Liu (PaulLiu) <email address hidden> Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:55:42 +0800

[savantelite (savantelite)]

Tried to Export to Facebook in F-Spot with eeepc 1000HE net book and confirm and cancel buttons were below the screen.

[savantelite (savantelite)]

^^^^^Running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix^^^^