Re: Expandable text entry widget

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Sep 5, 2006, at 5:15 PM, karderio wrote:

> For those of you who are thinking that they have seen this behaviour
> before, I admit shamelessly having pinched the idea from Google talk
> after seeing a friend happily chatting away with this application the
> other day.

This is also how Apple's iChat window behaves, as well as the To:  
field in the Mail composer (but not the Subject line), and other  
(normally) one-line text entry fields.  Rather than scrolling when  
the text fills the width of a single line, the entry widget grows  
another line (downward) and the text breaks.  In iChat, after you hit  
Return to send the message, the entry shrinks back to its original  
height.

I believe you could achieve this behavior by using a GtkTextView  
instead of a GtkEntry for that one-line entry.  You will have to hook  
some app-specific logic to the sizing behavior (e.g. fix the width so  
it grows only down, adjust that width when the user resizes the  
toplevel window, extra magic to shrink on clear (that's not  
TextView's default), etc).


Based on what i've seen in Mac OS X, i haven't quite figured out  
whether this is library behavior in Cocoa or something that these  
applications have done for themselves.  Maybe someone who knows Cocoa  
(or GnuStep) can illuminate.  This may help the maintainers decide  
whether this functionality belongs in gtk+ itself or in your app.

--
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Unfortunately, this article has been slightly damaged since it was  
neglectfully left on the sidewalk. It is available to its rightful  
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