Comment 41 for bug 433651

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).