[lmi] Copyable diagnostic messages [Was: Editor for product files: sketch of...]

[Greg Chicares]

On 2005-8-25 22:41 UTC, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:34:22 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> GC> As we design the new product-file editor, I think it makes sense
> GC> to add a few extra items on the screen. Ideally, they'd be
> GC> read-only text controls if gtk has such a thing
> 
>  Yes, it does. And they behave the same as in MSW, i.e. you can copy text
> from it (which is their advantage compared to static text labels) but not
> change them.

Not for immediate action, but for later consideration....

It would be helpful to use such an interface element for diagnostic messages.

Tonight I got an error report that quoted this:

 | Report formatting failed.
 | The specific command that failed was 'CMD /c /fop-0.20.5/fop \
 | -xsl "/for-0.20.5/offshore_private_placement.xsl" -xml \
 | "/fop-0.20.5/cp2.000000001..xml" "/fop-0.20.5/cp2.000000001..pdf". \
 | [file c:/opt/lmi/src/lmi/ledger_xsl.cpp, line 130]

It was laboriously typed by hand, and contains four typing mistakes.
This case is especially poignant because the command it quotes is best
debugged by pasting it into a shell, which won't gobble apache fop's
diagnostics. Clearly, we should use wxExecute() here, and capture the
output.

Recently someone else sent me a similar report; he attached a bitmap
captured from the screen, and the resulting email was half a megabyte,
but contained perhaps five hundred characters' worth of information.
The bitmaps were embedded in the email using some closed ms technology
that prevented mozilla from forwarding them.

We ought to make it easy for users to copy and paste messages into email.
Probably we should use the wxLog facility instead of wxMessageBox in
'alert_wx.cpp'.

It might be ideal to build in a facility to email lmi-generated diagnostics
to some hardcoded address (other than mine)--perhaps if they're of a grave
severity, or perhaps at the user's option.