GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 417310
Error shown when opening a blank file
Last modified: 2007-04-03 23:18:16 UTC
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #417303 +++ Opening a blank file displayed the following error message: "Unable to detect the subtitle format. Please check that the file type is supported."
Marco, what do you think would be the best behavior in this case? Continue to show the error, or open the blank file without showing any subtitle lines?
In my opinion the problem is that the message is disorienting and tends to give the user, if he/she didn't realize the file was actually empty, the impression something is wrong with the program or the subtitles file. So the best behavior would be to show an error with a different message, that is "File empty", or something like that.
I agree the message is disoriented, and perhaps having a message itself is disorienting and unnecessary here. If a user opens a file with no subtitles, I think it would be logical that the file got opened, but showed no subtitles. What do you think? It's like if you open a blank document in OpenOffice, you're not expecting things to go wrong just because the document is blank.
I agree with you; nevertheless I think the user should be warned he/she is opening an empty file. Maybe the ideal solution would be to pop a window with a message like "The file is empty. Do you want to open it?".
I think we disagree in that bit. Usually pop-ups are interpreted as annoyances, and so they must only be used when they're really necessary. IMHO, there's no new information presented to the user with that pop-up, because if no pop-up is shown the user will conclude the same thing - that the file is empty.
Fixed in trunk.