hidden error messages

[Christoffer Sørensen]

On 2/22/07, Mike Cornelison <mikecorn at arcor.de> wrote:
> When a GUI application outputs error messages to stdout or stderr, it is
> like writing them into a black hole. This stupid practice should stop.
> Messages to stdout or stderr should pop-up in a text window. This should
> be a standard part of Gnome/GTK or any other desktop GUI. stdout and
> stderr should be piped to another process to display. Better yet,
> printf() should not be used at all in such apps, since popping up a
> message window is so easy. In the case where a GUI front-end is driving
> a command-line back-end, output can still be piped back and displayed,
> although obviously there is more work to filter and recognize the error
> messages that the user needs to see.
> Can't this sorry situation be improved?

I share your frustration. A great example of this is f-spot, which
crashes with no error message at all.

Anyway, any program should give helpful error messages, so just
showing a popup with the stderr output would probably not help Joe
User but is better than nothing, I agree.

It is better to write a gui against a library instead of using a
console backend IMHO because you otherwise lose too much information.

You probably need to file bug reports against the specific offenders.