a suggestion about error-messages

[Peter Søndergaard <c960894 student dtu dk>]

Hi!

I all of the GUIs I have used for Linux/Unix, one thing has bothered me:
When a program crashes I dont get an error message: The error message is
sent to stdout/stderr, but I cant see that if the program has been
launched from a panel / menu. If f.x. I make a launcher in the
Gnome-panel which tries to execute the command "sklhgsd" (which
obviously doesnt exists) I can just push the button forever whithout
ever being informed that the command doesnt exist.

A solution to this could be simply to trap stdout and stderr from any
comand launched from the panel / a menu, and then pop up a small dialog
offering you to see stdout or stderr whenever a program exites whith an
errorlevel different from 0.

For the novice user this might not be very informative, but at least you
will know that something happened, and it will almost always be
something more informative than "Unknown error 7091" :-). The
experienced user on the other hand could be told quite a lot from this
information.

In all cases you would get the feeling that you are more in  control,
that things does not just happen without you knowing it. I would give
you a feeling that the GUI was more integrated with the rest of the
system, not just some fancy program-launcher sitting on top, hiding
important information from you.

This model could maybe be expanded a bit, so that you from another
program could examine stdout/stderror from running programs.  This could
really kill of the necessity of the terminal.

Anyway, I think more error messages would give a more 'integrated'
feeling.

Pardon if this subject has already been discussed, you are then free to
flame me! I am new to the list.

Peter Soendergaard