GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 373254
Error console tab raised for all messages
Last modified: 2008-01-15 14:09:50 UTC
I have a number of tabs for different dialogs (Layers, Channels, Undo History, Error console, etc.). With 2.3.12, gimp now automatically displays the Error Console tab when a new message is reported. I see the logic behind this, but often the messages are just informative (such as "Image saved ...") and I am then forced to manually reselect the tab I was using. Would it be possible to have gimp remember the tab that was displayed, continue to automatically display the Error Console when a message is generated, but automatically redisplay the previous tab as soon as the user performs another action such as selecting a tool or clicking in the image window? This would be a big productivity boost.
Are you sure that the behaviour has changed? The error console has always been raised when a new message is shown. Perhaps informative messages shouldn't go to the Error console at all? Or we could only raise it for messages with severity WARNING or above. This is basically a duplicate or at least very similar to bug #322210.
I was using 2.3.11 extensively and did not see this behavior. Maybe the change is that the "Image saved ..." messages are now getting logged? Unfortunately, I no longer have 2.3.11 installed so I cannot go back and check this. In any case, your idea of raising the Error Console only on high priority messages is a good one. I wonder why "Image saved" even needs to be logged? It seems unnecessary to me. Regarding bug 322210: This states that the Error Console grabs focus when raised. This must have been addressed as this is not happening to me - at least not for the "Image saved ..." messages. The mouse focus remains where it was. The problem is just that the tab that was being displayed is now hidden and needs to be reselected, which is a bit of a pain.
It is logged because you are using the Error Console and thus asked for every message to be logged. Perhaps it would help if you simply stopped using the error console? Anyway, we should probably do something about the informal messages. Either they shouldn't be routed to the error console at all or we should just silently add them without raising the error console.
Ah Ha! I didn't realize that there was a difference in behavior in displaying or not displaying the Error Console. You are correct that dropping the Console tab from the list stops this behavior and is a work-around for the problem. Thanks. I do agree with you that informative messages should not raise the console if it is in use, while more severe messages probably should continue to do so. Do messages now have some sort of priority level associated with them? If not, maybe they could be graded from 1-10 in severity and a Preferences option could be added to allow the user to set the level which should trigger the raising of (or the pop-up display of) the Error Console. Everything under the specified level would be silently logged. In fact, the minimum logging level could also be another user-settable Preference allowing low priority messages to simply be skipped without logging. Thanks for the feedback.
Would be nice to get this fixed for 2.4. Perhaps even along with bug #322210.
2006-11-22 Sven Neumann <sven@gimp.org> * app/gui/gui-message.c (gui_message_error_console): don't raise and focus the error console for not so severe error messages. Fixes bug #322210 and bug #373254.