Re: Handling non-technical users

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Tim Moore wrote:
> 
> >>>>> Dave Glowacki writes:
> 
> > As an example of a better approach toward software bugs, check out the
> > Wine project (www.winehq.com.)  When Wine fails, you can easily rerun
> > it with some debugging flags and have it automatically generate a trace
> > of the program execution and a final dump of the pertinent registers.
> > (Wine is emulating a Windows machine so all this information is easily
> > obtained.)  The trace/dump info can then be mailed in to the developers.
> > People don't need to learn how to use yet another tool, they just add
> > a flag to the commandline.
> 
> Perhaps something like Full Circle's Talkback is what we need.
> 
> http://www.fullcirclesoftware.com
> 
> In a nutshell, an application somehow negotiates a session with their
> program.  When the application crashes (or in various other events)
> their program collects register contents, stack traces, and arbitrary
> other data and sends it in an SHTTP request back to the developers.
> 
> Netscape uses it for 4.5 on Intel Linux.
> 
> Of course, it's not Free.  But a Free clone of it, which interfaces
> with the bug tracking system and perhaps handles intermittently
> connected machines, would be great!
> 
> Tim Moore

Mozilla was talking about getting that LGPL'd, or writing a clone of it.
That would *definately* be a worthwhile endevour to put effort into.
Anyone interested about this should try asking on the
netscape.public.mozilla.* groups.

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "All animals are equal, some animals
     are more equal than others."
         -- George Orwell, Animal Farm