I downloaded Pidgin (formerly gaim) on a new machine, like I normally do. I quickly noticed that I could no longer change the size of the text input area. I subscribed to ticket #4986 and watched the arguments roll until eventually the developers simply closed the ticket as wontfix. I’ve heard rumors there is some turmoil within development, but really only the developer to user turmoil is externally visible. I’ve just been using pidgin 2.3 while this was all being discussed but I’m switching to the funpidgin fork now that the developers have expressed that pidgin will not have an option to manually resize the text input area.

While it seems like a lame fork, it’s up to the pidgin developers I suppose as to see where things go from here. Hopefully if the pidgin developers keep contributing new code that doesn’t suck, the funpidgin developers will keep integrating it and keep up with releases. Of course, what would just be best is a damn option in pidgin to enable manual resizing again. Looks like that’s not happening with the current developer hierarchy though.

Getting manual input sizing back is a matter of  Tools -> Plugins, then Enable Entry Area Manual Size. You will likely need to close the conversation window and re-open it.