Re: [Gimp-developer] Console window on Win32

[Iago Rubio <iago rubio hispalinux es>]

On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 17:24, Harring Figueiredo wrote:
> --- Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi> wrote:
>
> > The consensus so far seem to be that GLib should not open any
> > console windows by itself. OK, fine with me, such a change could
> > be done even in the stable branch (2.4.x) IMHO. But I certainly
> > hope that it doesn't mean that people then will start whining
> > that they want "log windows" for warnings and error
> > messages. Sheesh, that's what the console windows are/were,
> > dammit.

>   This is EXACTLY what will happen -- People will say: "Stupid glib is dumping
> core -- (or should I say "crashing" since we are talking about windows?) and I
> have no clue where in MY program I am messing up --

I distributed one GTK app to some of my friends some times ago for
testing purpouses, and the consensus was "Hey iago, this crap is failing
badly, it opens a window with a lot of error messages." 

The app, was just complaining about missing fonts, theme engine and
locale issues, but windozers don't use to see the "log" window, so they
think something is going really bad. 

Some of them closed the app thinking it will hang their boxes or
something even worst.

My questions are: 

Are windows users expecting this behaviour? I mean to open a black
window for output messages.

Does they really know what the hell is it? 

>   Leave the DOS-Window, console window, DOS box alone !!! 
>   What is the trade off -- Have a "DOS box" or find potential problems faster ?

> From my experience, I think windows users will simply be confused with
this, and they will not know what it mean.

Take into account that there're lots of people in the world that can't
read english, and will not even be able to know what the output window
is trying to tell them.

>   PS - If the user is scared of the "DOS box" -- Why wouldn't she be scared of
> a log window as well ?

The clue is to avoid to scare users, and you can achieve this goal if
your applications behave as any other application in their platform.

Users expect a "default" - tell common -  behaviour between
applications, and to open a black window with lot's of cryptic messages
is something windows users are not comfortable with.

For debugging purpouses, you can open a DOS prompt and launch the app
from there.


Just my 2 (euro) cents.
-- 
Iago Rubio         
- GPG Keyserv  * pgp.rediris.es id=0x909BD4DD