Chat window grows beyond screen bounds - no text wrap when typing in the message entry

[Brewster Malevich]

Binary package hint: empathy

Issue still present in Oneiric.

In Karmic, Lucid & Maverick, the text ~does not~ wrap when typing text in a chat window. Instead, the window grows.

This has been noticed in both IRC and XMPP (Jabber), possibly others.
It would be nice if the text wrapped. :-)

POSSIBLE WORKAROUNDS:

* Resizing the contact list to a big enough size to prevent the expansion.
* Text wrap may work if the room contact list is disabled (uncheck Conversation > Show contactlist).
* Use Pidgin instead

[Alex Lourie (alourie)]

Brews

Could you please attach a screenshot? I see the text wrapped perfectly.

Thanks.

[Tuna Soncul (tsoncul)]

Hello,

With empathy 2.28.0-0ubuntu1, the behavior is as expected, and the text wraps perfectly. Brews, would you be able to check your version of the software?

Thanks.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

there is no list of irc protocols how can i connect to free node # i am using empathy 2.28

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

As of 2.28.0 its gone. The text wraps as it should. Sorry, I forgot to put version # in original post.

[Зоран Рилак (zoran.rilak)]

Empathy 2.28.0.1, exactly the same behavior as reported by Brews. This combined with bug #389046 makes it very difficult to converse with MSN contacts.

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

Alright, I'm going to reopen this and try to upload the debug next time this happens.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is known upstream too see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587441

[jura1985 (jura1985)]

This bug happens to me when I try to reduce the size of contacts part of IRC window, if I resize it back to or over the default size it starts wrapping again...

Ubuntu 9.10
Empathy 2.28.1

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

check out

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

and also

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

faced in empathy 2.28 but fixed in 2.29.5

[Matthew Pirocchi (matthew-pirocchi)]

This is present in Empathy 2.29.91.2 (Lucid Alpha 3 with latest updates). I think it was working right until a few days ago, but I could be misremembering. Only tested in IRC.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

its back.

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

I'm not sure if this is an empathy bug or not. I'm going to try talking with the empathy people about this.

[Michal Predotka (mpredotka)]

I'm facing this problem on Lucid beta. It's really annoying.

[RomeReactor (romereactor)]

Still there in Lucid Beta1, empathy 2.29.93

[Tom Verdaat (tom-verdaat)]

I can confirm this bug in Lucid Beta 1.

Text wrap works as it should if the IRC room contactlist is disabled (uncheck Conversation > Show contactlist). If you enable the contactlist, the window automatically grows (width only) when typing texts longer than the window width. It does not wrap text in the input field anymore.

Also, I noticed that the window already starts widening before you've reached the end of the input field. Looks like the right part of the input field that remains blank is about the same width as the default width of the contactlist. Can't confirm that though, because I had already made it smaller.

This bug is really annoying, especially on small screens like netbooks. The window is able to grow beond the size of the desktop itself. I've tried maximizing the window, but even then it still widens further. A part just drops off the screen. This makes it a real usability bug so I think the importance should be higher than the current 'low'.

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

same here......

IRC chat window text-box does not wrap, instead increases window size.

- 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta1
- Empathy 2.30.0-0ubuntu4

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Ian, the workaround is that you should not let any of the username in the room to ellipsize. and triaged means that this bug has enough information for developers to work. this is an upstream issue

[DavidW617 (davidw617)]

I have this problem also in Ubuntu 10.04 beta2 with Empathy 2.30.0.1 and it was driving me crazy. Disabling contact list makes irc usable in Empathy.

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

Upgrading importance to Medium. Estimated number of users affected is on the rise, and this is a big and noticeable UI issue.

[rww (rww-deactivatedaccount)]

This is also happening to me. Additionally, if the window is maximized, it seems to be attempting to resize it anyway, causing a rather annoying shaking effect.

[Gordon (spambox-thisblueroom)]

Confirmed on 2.30.0.1 on Lucid release candidate. This is occurring in a Jabber chat room whenever usernames or their statuses have been horizontally resized down enough that part of the content is truncated and replaced with an ellipse.

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

Issue only exists when the Ubuntu adium theme is applied to empathy (ubuntu theme).

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

apologizes.... wrong bug.....

[Gam (gam-doodyandgam)]

Bug always present in Empathy 2.31.3.
PPA version and Ubuntu 10.10 alpha 2.
It's too bad not having a contact list when you are connected on a MUC chat room in the gnome official IM ...

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

This bug will be fixed in empathy 3.0

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

Maverick RC, empathy version 2.32.0-0ubuntu2
Still the same. 3.0 seems a hell of a long way off from the current 2.32...am I the only one wondering when this is meant to be scheduled for release??

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

Actually, if the fix has already been developed, there should be nothing stopping earlier versions having this fix pulled in. I don't mind deb'bing it up in a PPA for now if anyone can provide the fix details.

[Allen Lowe (lallenlowe)]

I can confirm this issue in Maverick with all updates. Empathy 2.32.0. For me, it only happens in IRC channels.

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

I'm getting this in Maverick with Jabber. I never had this problem when I was using Lucid (also with Jabber).

[Lloyd Severence (lloydseverence)]

Empathy 2.32.0.1
Ubuntu 10.10

This bug is present in Jabber Chat Rooms.

On my end it appears the bug is only present when a user list is part of the screen. When I click on Conversation -> Show Contact List and disable it, the behavior stops and text wrapping works correctly in the chat room.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

the real issue is in gtk+ and should be fixed there. keeping the ubuntu bug so that its easy for people to find it.

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

Omer, what is the issue?
is there a bug # for it in gtk+?
I think launchpad is not serious enough with the word "affected". Quite often i noticed, people consider a project affected only if it is the cause of a problem, even though the functionality of a lot of other apps is affected also.

there should be a difference between "affected" and "responsible".

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

frekerik, the gtk+ bug is linked to this bug report. anyways here https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587441

[Kevin Choi (kchoix)]

Simple workaround is to have Conversation->Show ContactList as disabled, thank Tom Verdaat for finding this

[Juan Sebastián Marulanda (juanchito2006)]

Workarounds are just that, the issue is very annoying.

[Joey Dodson (ninjawailer)]

I have the same problem, it's not fixed in Empathy 2.32.1 [Ubuntu 10.10].

Some observations from others' comments as well as a bit of messing around with it:

*the window will expand rather than wrap text
*this only happens in chatrooms (as opposed to private conversations)
*this does not happen if the contact list is disabled
*someone mentioned that it only happens if at least one contact is truncated with ellipses (see gtk+ bug link below, thanks Omer!), though I found that this is not the case. Though there does seem to be some threshold size, where if the contact list is over a certain size, the problem doesn't occur.
*this also seems to be tab specific for me, meaning if I make one room's contact window small and go to another room it wraps fine, whereas if I go back to that room it will expand
*it will expand some length before the text actually reaches the end of the input field
*it will expand past the edge of the monitor
*maximizing the window does not stop the issue
*it's not possible to resize the window smaller again without deleting (or sending) the text
*also this seems to be a gtk+ bug as Omer mentioned: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587441

Hopefully this summary is helpful to someone that might be looking at this issue. Others should feel free to confirm or deny these claims (though I tested all of them on my own system).

[Joey Dodson (ninjawailer)]

Oh, also for now I am dealing with the issue by just resizing the contact list to a big enough size to prevent the expansion. Users should not have to worry about things like this in the long term, but it is a decent short term solution for myself.

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

Updated the description to show the workarounds at the top of the report. No real need for further comments as a fix should be pushed to empathy's git master soon, perhaps we can cherry-pick that patch.

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

I only use Empathy for XMPP/Jabber, and have the problem too. It's not just an IRC problem. Description updated.

Also of note: Disabling the contact list doesn't work for me.

[Fibonacci (fibonacci-prower)]

Maximizing the window will not only not stop the issue, but make it worse instead: the window will jump back and forth with each letter typed.
Also, resizing the window is not an adequate solution if you have to type long texts. Eventually you'll have to resize the chat window past the screen size.

[Leon Winter (lwi)]

I can confirm this issue with Empathy 2.32.1.
The input box for the group chat dialogue (in this case XMPP MUC) expands instead of wrapping the text around. As correctly mentioned before, this only happens when the member list is shown.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

The issue has been fixed in gtk+3 and won't be fixed in gtk+2 series. The issue is fixed in empathy in Oneiric.

[Paul Hoell (hoellp)]

This is NOT fixed in oneiric, at least not in version 3.1.90-0ubuntu1 which is the most recent available.

I won't mess with the settings, as this affects a lot of people, but the bug is still valid, the text box doesn't expand vertically, only horizontally and the chat window resizes accordingly.

[Paul Hoell (hoellp)]

I just explored this further, the same behavior is visible with Jabber MUCs and also with the user list deactivated.

This makes using these features very cumbersome, bordering on unusable.

[fldc (fldc)]

Issue is still present in oneiric.

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

I just tried to set the status back to "Confirmed", but it's not letting me do so. Can someone with permissions set the status back? One person already reported that it's still broken, and another confirmed it. Thanks.

[Nick (nicky-nick-nickleton)]

I'm on Empathy 2.34.0 and I can get the bug to come and go depending on the width of the participants list on the right hand side. If it's smaller than some width, the box stops wrapping, but if I make the participants list a bit wider, the input box wraps properly.

[Stefan Rijnhart (Opener) (stefan-opener)]

Reset to confirmed. To make things worse, Empathy now crashes for me when applying the workaround of hiding the contact list.

[psypher (psypher246)]

this issue is still present in precise. 3 year old bug, is there ANY advancement?

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

If this is too annoying, I recommend using Pidgin until this gets fixed. I added a note about this to the description.