Display name not truncated with ellipsis in get info window

Not expanding properly (Figure 1)

Advanced Pane Positioning of Elements (Figure 2)

5 and 6 are fixed now, since they were quick. 7 should have worked as you expected (changing the account should in fact filter the list based on which account you have selected.) If that's not the case, could you make a ticket about that, since it's kind of major.

In regards to #2 - putting it next to the contact name is difficult, because that directly depends on the length of the name to position correctly - not impossible though. What if it was positioned under the status icon/display name. Also, do you have issues with the name at the top being clipped for contacts with long names similar to how the popup button is clipping long names?

eharris: oh ... wow indeed I do - I just assumed it would wrap and never really looked closely enough to find it is also being clipped!

Under the display name/status icon sounds fine to me - do others agree that it would look better there? That was the only point I wasn't 100% sure about. Maybe move it there and see what people say - assuming it wouldn't be too difficult to move back if others dislike it.

Replying to jas8522: ...

Under the display name/status icon sounds fine to me - do others agree that it would look better there? ...

I do! :)

Putting the status icon after the name just requires putting it into an attributed string as an attachment at the end. See how the name w/ service icon is produced for the contact list tooltips (AIInterfaceController, I believe).

Replying to evands:

Putting the status icon after the name just requires putting it into an attributed string as an attachment at the end. See how the name w/ service icon is produced for the contact list tooltips (AIInterfaceController, I believe).

Duly noted, We could certainly do this, but I worry about the window getting resized to be absolutely huge when say, someone with a really long displayName (say, a custom message in MSN) is selected. In this case, the window would grow to an absolutely huge length unless we truncated the string. If we truncate the string however, we'd lose the image at the end.

Right now, we don't resize the window to accommodate the content expanding past it's bounds, we assume the size we get from the nibs corresponding to each view is the size they want to be, and just roll with that. Unfortunately, this works great for everything except MSN, which is the only service where we setup displayName to contain anything long enough to cause this edge case to happen.

I suppose one solution is to use UID for MSN contacts, but I don't want to discard their aliases if they've got one set. I assume what happens (someone correct me here if I'm wrong) is that custom message overrides UID by being set as the display name, unless an alias is set, since aliases will override the custom message. The custom message is presumably then either appended onto the alias, or is available in some other way. (Or maybe MSN users never use aliases since iirc MSN sends actual name information)

Anyhow, I fixed some more issues in [22898]. Our segmented control is misbehaving a bit, and I can't get rid of the rounded corners. I'm trying to figure out a workaround, but it seems that the view will always put the segmented control at NSMinX, and no lower than that, so we can't hide the rounded part by setting it offscreen in the nib. I might just hack it to get moved a few pixels to the left after we've loaded it, and that may take care of it.

Anyhow, string handling is up next. So, weigh in on how you think we should handle displayNames that are too long.

Is there no way to wrap them? There's a lot of space beside the user icon and below the username anyway...

Yes you're right - the display name overrides the UID in MSN, and the Adium-only aliases override the display name (they don't get synchronized with the server because there isn't such an option in the MSN protocol). Pretty much nothing uses the UID - but it's always displayed in tooltips and in the get info window anyway.

You could use the UID there like you're suggesting, since their display name shows up in the profile information as "Nickname: <display name>". But I think the display name would be best - for consistency with other protocols, and because it helps differentiate a metacontact from one of it's subcontacts (the subcontacts are referenced by UID, whereas the metacontact is referenced by it's display name).

The problem here of course, is that wrapping the display name (which is easily doable) is ugly.

And actually, now that the status image has changed positions, that space is gone. :P

Ahh, but if we get rid of the text "Status:" and only place the icon after the contact name (which would then be wrapped) we should be all set. Small names will stay in the same place, medium length names might bump the status icon down to the next line and large names would just keep going until (I'm assuming) a certain character length cut-off. I would suggest a length that prevents it from ever extended beyond two lines (which should be around 40 characters I think).

So the layout would be:
Short Names
[Service icon] Display Name [Status icon]
Long Names
[Service Icon] Display Name really really
really really lo... [Status icon]

Just don't forget the elipsis to inform people that there is more to the name! Then they can just enlarge the info window to see it all.

Plus, if you don't have any MSN contacts, then there's no difference from before - the only people that have to see the 'ugly' wrapping are those with MSN contacts... better than chopping it off or an ellipsis after only a single line in my opinion

The code could pretty easily be changed to allow separate access to the serverside display name and the Adium alias (if set) so that they could be displayed as desired... but I believe the serverside display name will show up in the Info tab in the information we display, in any case.

In terms of truncation of a long name, we could put the ellipsis in the middle instead of the end to allow a status icon shown after it to be guaranteed to still display.

(In [23408]) Truncate the tail of the display name in the info inspector. Fixes #9465