Dynamicall resizing height of MLE as needed when typing new messages

The MLE for typing new messages is very small on Android phones/tablets, ie only a couple of lines. This is fine when the message is only a few words but unfriendly when typing a longer message where you have to scroll to see what you typed earlier.

I suggest the MLE dynamically resizes as needed, perhaps up to 2/3 of the available height on a phone/tablet. This would still leave 1/3 available to view older messages if needed while typing a new message.

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I get that it is about text area, but what is “MLE”?

You are correct, it is about the text area and I should not have used that acronym. Somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered a window control element called MLE, an acronym for, if I remember correctly, Multi-Line Edit.

It is about entering new messages of course.

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you can always edit the title to improve it. :wink:

“message input”, “input field”, “composer” are words that come to my mind.

There is a simple setting in some of the xml files which defines max
height of the input field. Don’t know current setting of DC but in my build I extended this to a size of six lines (more is possible). This setting is static and has to be defined at compile time.
With an extended line number input field is growing automatically until max size is reached.

As I’m using a small Samsung S3 mini device a number of 6 lines IMHO is a good compromise (for me).

I just checked my tablet and five lines are visible at any one time. However, given that DC is not a text messaging program such as Signal etc. but an IM interface to /e-mail/ I think it is reasonable to allow many more lines to be visible at any one time - dependent on the height of the screen in use, of course. The user should be able to write more than a couple of sentences without needing to scroll to see what he/she just wrote.

Formatting, btw, includes being able to separate an e-mail message into paragraphs with an empty line between paragraphs for clarity. This requires more than five - or six - lines.

My suggestion again is that this entrybox dynamically resizes itself beyond the five lines it does on my tablet up to 2/3 or 3/4 of the height of the screen. This means that the user who writes very short messages still uses a minimally sized entrybox whereas the user who sends longer messages will automatically have much more of the message visible at a single time. The rest of the screen height should still show previously sent/received messages of course.

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I think this would be the behaviour if you simply extend the max lines setting of input field.
As far as I know growth of input field ends if size reaches screen limit.

from Make writing zone fullscreen - #3 by r10s

note: if you turn to “landscape”, the input field is shown full screen. might be a reasonable workaround for now.