Ashwin Bharambe wrote:
Hi Mark,
I think these messages are "harmless" in a certain sense. They say that some additional functionality in Inkscape (which is implemented as external extensions) would not be available on your system because some (external) programs on which this functionality depends could not be found. So, I would suggest you ignore these messages.
Others on the list: do we really *have* to show extensions failing to load when somebody first starts Inkscape? It really presents a "Ugh; this program is so broken" impression to a new user when really nothing that awful has happenned! This topic was brought on this list before but IIRC, there was no resolution. Can this not be recorded in some log somewhere? And shown only when a particular extension is actually BEING PUT TO USE?
Thanks, Ashwin
I somewhat agree. The extensions architecture is a "work in progress," so it can be expected that one or more of the items in Inkscape are not yet functional. It -IS- only version 0.42, after all. ;-) . So we can be expected to fail in some things, but it is good to not bother or confuse the user too much.
However, when the item fails, we need to generate the information, so that he/she can tell us what Inkscape claimed the problem to be. I am in favor of redirecting these messages (only for now) from a dialog to the Message console or logging function, so that the user is not confused by the "soft" error, but we still get the debugging information that we need. Maybe this has already happened?
We are, after all, Open Source, and are in collaboration with our users. Analogous to shareware, the currency we would like to receive from Inkscape users is debug information that helps us to improve the product.
Bob (ishmal)