Last days I tried to fix that problem with horizontal space issue of desktop Element. Now I’m sure what’s going on and it is more a PureOS “fault” then from Element (even if they could fix this). To drag and drop the inner window size you need the left click hold down. PureOS interprets the finger touch as left click and the “hold down” as right click hold down. This way Element doesn’t know what you want to do.
The room-list on the left always will always fill 50% of the space if there is not enough horizontal space, as long as it’s size would be >=50% of horizontal space. That means, that the default size is just above 50% screenspace and will be fixed as soon as we’re able to resize it with mouse or simulated left click hold down. But it works perfectly with little screens and every other touch input.
I tried to fix it via setting files and found the file where this setting is stored. Usually I would be happy and able to fix this. Unfortunately not in this case. It is a file where also other account datas are stored - half encrypted (few sings can be read, others not). As soon as I change something, everything will be replaced. It has to do with account security (you also have to log in and verify device again). I don’t see any way to manipulate this.
Now we have 2 choices:
- Report it back to Element on Git (I may do later) that they alternatively allow resizing with right click hold down like on other sliders.
- To find a way to simulate left click on Squeekboard. I already was looking for a keysym to do so. On one change I broke my keyboard totally (a keysym broke it). An app appeared that said “something got broken and cannot be fixed” with a button to restart phosh. I also found a way to fix this with touch input only, but I stopped looking further for now.
As I said above, you can downscale the resolution. With terminal keyboard Ctrl + - you can do it inside the app. So this app is also usable with default 200% OS resolution scale. In Options you can upscale letters ab to 20px (15 is default, for me 18 fits perfect). Because you can’t upscale, but you can downscale to unreadable size, you can get problems to reset the size.
For that I found a solution: delete the file ~/.config/Element/Preferences (will be created again automatically) or edit the entry of {"vector":-1.5}. -1.5 is the value that fits perfectly for me and my OS 150% screen scale. You should edit it while app is closed (check task manager!).
While I was writing this post I realized that I got what I tried and I don’t know how I solved it. Could be a shortcut or something while I was playing with files. I wish I could tell you how I fixed this, but I don’t want to mess it up. However, here are the screenshots how it fits for me right now:
Bubble view (has more space on half horizontal screen space; letters had 15px size, that’s why they’re a bit smaller)
Modern view (has already more space on my horizontal pixel count)
Modern view + right panel file view
