On Fri, 4 Feb 2005, bulia byak wrote:
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 05:41:40 -0400 From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> To: vellum <kaver@...68...> Cc: Inkscape users list inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net, inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Ted Gould <ted@...11...>, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...260...> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Status needed for ReleaseNotes
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 20:13:44 +1100, vellum <kaver@...68...> wrote:
Sorry, we're dealing with users here not developers. I see it as potentially more harmful than good. When I look at extension-errors.log the first thing I see is
Users do not read error messages or Help manuals except if they cannot avoid them. I know some of the people here might read the user manual before trying to use newly purchased electronics but if you do you are exceptional, most people dont do that kind of thing.
Release builds will be around a lot longer than Nightly testing builds. Given that distrubtions take a long time to ship we could be hearing questions about these error messages for at least a year and possibly two years or more. If I'm stuck with an old build the local sysadmin installed I have virtually no ability to trouble shoot such errors.
I would strongly encourage release builds to show minimal error messages. A status bar message saying "not all plugins have loaded, see error log for more details" should nearly be enough or this should be dumped to the console where only testers should see it.
Hey,and if they turn the message off. How do they get it to show again if they want to check to see whether their installation has been successful, and they have forgotten where to look?
It's the same problem as with all other "Don't show it again" checkboxes that are pretty common in software. How do other programs work around this?
Gnome tells you not to do it at all. It is considered very bad user interface design.
If an error requiers "Dont show this message again" then it cannot be that important.
- Alan H.