Question

Can the Custom Fields plugin allow for a larger text field, such as what we get for the release notes? It could be useful to have an additional large / window-edited field for a possible testing plan or steps.

The current "long text" field type is not what we want -- the release notes edit is about four times as large and as such much easier to edit and read. On the top the size is fine, but on the left it's rather small. On the top though it can rather be in the way. It would be nice to have a field option where it it would behave exactly like the release notes, in a separate edit window, etc.

Answer 1

We created a library that abstracts away a lot of the 'hard stuff' for creating a Custom Fields-like plugin into a library called BugField (http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/library/70/html/135BB8DE.htm). If you are interested in doing some kind of custom UI, that would be a great place to start. You'd want inherit from CLongTextBugField and override BugView.

Here is the code for a plugin (happens to be written in Wasabi, but if you're a coder you'll get the idea) that uses BugField. As you can see, most of it is just establishing the identity of the plugin.

If you're looking for a solution that doesn't require any coding, I have added a feature request to get this into Custom Fields, and we'll try to get this into a default later version.

Public Class BugFieldTestPlugin _
Implements IPluginBugDisplay, IPluginBugCommit, IPluginFullTextIndexBug, IPluginGridColumn, IPluginFilterOptions, IPluginFilterCommit, IPluginFilterBugEntry, IPluginDatabase, IPluginSearchAxis _ 
Inherits CBugFieldPlugin

    Protected Static PluginId = "BugFieldTest@fogcreek.com"
    Public Sub Class_Initialize(api), Base(api) : End Sub

    Public Override Function DatabaseSchemaVersion
    	Return 1
    End Function

    Public Override Function BugFields
    	Return Array( New CLongTextBugField(api ,"BugField Test LongText", "Long Text Test", PluginId, "longtext_col", 6))
    End Function

End Class

Answer 2

Yes -- if you add a custom field of data type "Long Text" (it's one of the options in the Custom Field plugin) you will get a text field much like that for release notes.