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I would say, if a help line doesn't fit, it shopuld elipsize in

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tghe end and an unfolding/folding button should appear. Yes, it would be neat to have it as RFE.

Hmm, I favor the elipsis + tooltip approach. It's what most other stuff does these days in similar situations.

In CorelDraw you can simply "drag" the edge of the status bar higher, so that it has 2 or more lines. Winamp slides long texts to the left and right, similar to some car radios :)

caliga