Re: XML libs (was Re: gconf backend)

[Murray Cumming <murrayc usa net>]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 16:41, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 07:23, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 09:07, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > > By inferior error messages I mean something like "attribute doesn't
> > > match regexp 'big scary regexp'" is worse than "attribute must have
> > > format #RRGGBB or gtk:fg[NORMAL]" (pick many other similar examples,
> > > browse metacity/src/theme-parser.c).
> > 
> > Personally, I think these error messages would never be seen by sensible
> > users, so it's not a problem that's worth spending lots of time one.
> 
> That's not true. Admins will edit the dbus config file, and theme
> authors will edit the metacity theme files, for example. I've had theme
> authors comment on how helpful the error messages were. Still room for
> improvement no doubt. ;-)

These aren't regular users. I was thinking of precisely these 2 sets of people (admins and developers). 

I think the administrator _should_ be using a GUI to edit the files, and I think he won't be completely lost 
if he's sees an error. I think theme developers, like all developers,  are a very small population. I'm not 
against having better error messages there, of course.
 
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com