The o_row class mechanism is supposed to be used to put another
element next to a field, like a button for example. However,
in the case of phone and email field, the o_text_overflow hack
gets in the way.
The problem that o_text_overflow is trying to solve is when you
have a long email, the table used to display the form view fields
tends to use very long cells (td) so it can display the whole email
address. This behavior completely breaks the form view, even though
the email address is clearly set to wrap in css. The o_text_overflow
class is a hack that forces the table to think that the email is
small, then defaulting to the width 50% css rules. If the email is
too long, it is correctly wrapped inside the cell, without breaking
the form view layout.
However, when we need to add a button next to those fields, this
hack gets in the way of the o_row class css rules, completely
wrecking it. We looked for a fix with qsm-odoo for hours but were
unable to find one that did not require a complete rewrite of the
form view css rules. In the end, we decided to remove the hack from
the phone field and keep it on the email field, as we think it is
less common to have a very long phone number than to have a very
long email.
David Monjoie
a3828dfed3