[Bugs] #2063 UNSP: Sugar should bring up an alert when an unhandled Python exception occurs

[Sugar Labs Bugs]

#2063: Sugar should bring up an alert when an unhandled Python exception occurs
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    Reporter:  bernie                     |          Owner:  tomeu                      
        Type:  defect                     |         Status:  new                        
    Priority:  Unspecified by Maintainer  |      Milestone:  Unspecified by Release Team
   Component:  sugar                      |        Version:  Git as of bugdate          
    Severity:  Unspecified                |       Keywords:                             
Distribution:  Unspecified                |   Status_field:  Unconfirmed                
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Comment(by bernie):

 Replying to [comment:1 eben]:

 > Of course they would! An incomprehensible error message is useful to no
 one, and can—as you say—frustrate or confuse people. However, most UX
 folks are not inherently opposed to error message or dialogs of all kinds;
 it just happens to be rather difficult to design good ones, and bad ones
 are often really bad.

 I agree we should work hard to make our error messages clear and
 intelligible, but not at the cost of suppressing essential information
 that technical support would need to help novice users.

 In modern Linux UIs you often need to ask the user: "please open a
 terminal and type..." because the GUI is useless. Having no alternative,
 Windows tends to provide more informative error messages in the GUI.


 > I'm in favor of showing an error message for an uncaught exception
 (since feedback is good!), though I caution against displaying the actual
 exception string in this instance. It's unlikely to make sense to the
 primary audience. Instead, I would generate some friendly message that
 lets them know that the action they attempted didn't work as expected, and
 then offering a link into the Log activity to learn more should they want
 to dig deeper.

 100% agreed. What icon could we bring up to go with this message? Do we
 have a "gasping" or "puzzled" laptop icon in the style of the sleeping
 computer that we use for power management?


 > (All this to say I mostly agree with Bernie, but hopefully I've set some
 misunderstandings about us "UX folks" straight. =) )

 Hehe, sorry about that :-)

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Ticket URL: <http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2063#comment:2>
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