[Bug 59333] Re: gaim window size unrestricted

[Luke Schierer]

If a user makes a decision to resize a window such that part of a menu
is hidden, why should I, the developer, prevent him?  Who am I to say
that the "Help" menu _must_ be seen?  Perhaps that user never uses the
menu, and so does not see any loss.  I know I don't use the Help menu on
any application 90% of the time. So, yes, I am saying that the user
should be able to resize a window such that widgets (and therefore
features) are hidden from view.

Once I make that stipulation, putting an absolute limit on how small a
window can get is clearly an impossible task.  How small is "too small"?
75% of the window? 50%? what about the buddy list, where its vertical
height could be reasonably resized to show only a single buddy entry.
Add to that, the fact that a single buddy entry might be one of two
sizes.  How do I compute "too small"?

I think that users should be expected to exercise a little bit of
responsibility here.  IF they resize a window "too small," I would
expect them to immediately increase its size.  If they need a feature, I
expect them to not hide it from view when they resize the window.

Consistency is certainly of importance.  But I don't agree that
consistency is a sufficient excuse to repeat the mistakes other
programmers are making in many cases.  Here I still see no compelling
reason to place an arbitrary restriction on what you can decide to do
with your use of gaim.

If gaim claimed to be part of GNOME, it might be a different story.
GNOME makes specific promises to users about how applications will
behave, as outlined in their HIG and other documents.  Failure to follow
the GNOME HIG is a bug - for GNOME applications.

Gaim is not however, and so what, exactly, we are supposed to be
consistent with is far less certain, far less clear-cut.  In many cases,
true consistency is clearly impossible.  Gaim runs in GNOME, in KDE, in
pretty much any X11 environment with any or no window manager or desktop
environment.  It also runs in Windows, and in OSX.  the behavior of
windows in these diverse environments can differ quite drastically.  For
that reason, most arguments for "consistency" fail to convince.  They
tend to boil down to "prefer my environment and my use patterns, who
cares about anyone else."  Any such decision often increases consistency
with one environment only at the expense of consistency with some other
environment.

-- 
gaim window size unrestricted
https://launchpad.net/bugs/59333