State reporting (was: Re: Major FUD (was Re: Add root drive mapping to default config file))

[Paul McNett]

Mike Hearn writes:

> Basically I think the Wine output should be hidden by default as it's
> essentially meaningless to anybody but developers (and often, anybody
> but wine developers).

PMFJI, I'm basically a Wine newbie as of 11/01/02 and a Linux newbie as of a 
year before that, but it was precisely this terminal output that started me 
down the right path to get my applications working. Had it just "not 
worked" with no output, I wouldn't have known where to turn and it would 
have been more frustrating than actually using Windows. So... please don't 
hide the output by default.


> So, that leaves the question of how to display these USERMSG logs. I'd
> propose a simple dialog box which contains a graphical list of output.
> If you've ever seen the Mozilla JavaScript console, something like that.
> It'd be displayed when the first USERMSG is shown, or on demand via a
> command line switch or something, as it could be used to filter the log
> messages at runtime for instance.

> Anyway. It's just random brain activity from me. Thoughts?

I like that idea of a graphical output box. However, what if the user's 
problem has something to do with their x11 setup or something? I don't 
think you should change the current terminal output at all, at least not 
until after Wine 1.0. 

Maybe augment it with an *additional* graphical output dialog box of some 
sort - have it go behind the main application window without taking focus 
away from it, and have it be a completely separate process so that it is 
still there on the screen when the user's application crashes and 
disappears. But don't work on that until Wine is past the .9 stage, there 
are too many other more important things to work on! <g>

There are adequate resources all over the web, findable by a simple Google 
search, to help the newbie users get Wine working with XYZ application. Too 
many of these users suffer from what I label an "attitude of entitlement" 
as in "Your application wasted my time and now you have to help me make it 
work".  Wine works, but it is pre-alpha, and users don't need to be 
hand-holded at this point - they need to get a clue first.

Sorry for being so verbose. I just think that Wine needs to get to the 1.0 
release stage before making the output 'pretty'. The trail of what is wrong 
with XYZ app starts with that terminal output.  Certain users can and 
should be scared away for the time being. <g>

My completely unsolicited .02 cents - hopefully not a complete waste of 
bandwidth.

-- 
Paul McNett