"Previous Conversations" window gets ever larger with Clean,Simple and Blue chat themes

[Narcissus]

Binary package hint: empathy

When I open a "Previous Conversations" window by right clicking on a contact, it gets infinitely larger in length, sometimes even making X restart.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: empathy 2.34.0-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.41-generic-pae 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Apr 11 00:22:08 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Beta i386 (20110330)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

Thanks for your bug report and helping to make Ubuntu better. I can not reproduce this issue with a fully updated natty dist. First I would request you to try upgrading fully and seeing if you get this error. Secondly, if you still get the issue, having screenshots or having a video (recordmydesktop) of the incident may be helpful.

[Narcissus (narcissus)]

As requested, I'm joining a brief screencast of the window itself getting larger and larger. The capture shows the window after right-clicking on a contact and selecting "Previous Conversations". I just took time to put in to the left to hide the addresses. It's worth noting that this continues forever if I'm not closing it. I am running a fully updated Natty.

[Narcissus (narcissus)]

unity:
  Installed: 3.8.8-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.8.8-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.8.8-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Narcissus (narcissus)]

To be precise, I only get this behavior with this window and only in Empathy.

[ignatius (ignatius)]

I can confirm this behaviour with the current distro release and empathy 2.34. I'm running the nVidia drivers - if that's relevant?

To replicate the problem, change the empathy theme to either simple, clean, or blue - and possibly classic.
Then click on Previous Conversation for any contact.

It looks like it does it on one of 2 conditions:
1. when the time stamp is floated right in the theme, or
2. when the line length of the chat is too long (classic).

[Narcissus (narcissus)]

I completely forgot to say that to be able to reproduce this bug, you have to use the "Clean", "Simple" or "Blue" themes in Empathy. This behavior disappears with the "Classic" or "Ubuntu" default theme.

[OrelEagle (oreleagle)]

Hello,

I have tested the 5 theme available on my system. As a summary:

Ubuntu: no problem
Classic: no problem
Simple: expands to the right and removes window decorations
Clean: only expands
Blue: only expands

As you can see, using the "simple" theme also removes the window decorations (window title and borders). You can bring them back by running compiz --replace

[rilebi4100 (rilebi4100-deactivatedaccount)]

Just a note, my duplicate (#775352) occurred for me on Intel video, so this doesn't appear to be specific to the nvidia driver.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

I concur with Narcissus, ignatius and OrelEagle.

Marking as Confirmed — if the "fully updated natty dist" in #2 had the (default?) chat theme "Ubuntu" set, that would explain why the bug was not reproduced.

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream. Thanks in advance!

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

i think we need to fix the higher level problem here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/694533

the window would be to the point and concise, if it actually showed only recent conversations with the contact it was opened for.

a general recency sorted overview for all contacts would also be desireable, but it should be sorted according to recency or frequency of contact, and not at all in the impractical manner in which it is now being displayed.

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

Upstream has a new question that you should go to and respond.

[eimajenathat (eimajenthat)]

Sorry, where can I find the upstream bug report? Would love to help, if I can.

[OrelEagle (oreleagle)]

eimajenathat : you can find the link to the upstream bug on top of the page: gnome-bugs #650778, just above the bug description.

I have answered to the question, but feel free to add any clarification if needed.

[Chad Miller (cmiller)]

Noted in upstream bugzilla:

For me, it happens with:

Classic,
Blue,
Clean,
Simple.

Not with

Ubuntu.

It happens with AIM contacts, Google Talk, Yahoo, and Zeroconf.

It seems as though the text container tries to expand to fit a miscalculation
of minimum line width necessary to display some text. The window expands, and
more text is pulled up from a lower row, which forces (mis-)recalculation of
minimum line width. Repeat until all text utterances are on their own single
lines.

Using 2.34.0-0ubuntu3

[Brian Curtis (bcurtiswx)]

This was fixed upstream and is in ubuntu. Closing