Output Messages Window

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Revision as of 20:30, 16 January 2015 by Dlipsa (talk | contribs)
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Currently, ParaView's Output Window for messages from its internal code are text only, presenting the whole information that may be useful to a developer. The current output window has several drawbacks:

  • A message always contains the whole information, making it hard for users that do not need that to extract the relevant parts.
  • If messages are reported several times from the application, they are printed several times in the output window.

As an example we show the output window after an nonexistent variable is typed in the Calculator window.

Output-window-original.jpg

We plan to redesign the Output Window to address these issues as follows. By default, we only show the message coming from the code. We do not show the location of the error or the address. If a message is reported several times, a count is shown reporting how many times the message was repeated. Note that the count is incremented only identical messages that come one after another.

In the next image, Type represents the type of message (Error, Warning or Debug (Info) - these would be shown using icons), Count shows how many times a message was repeated, Details column will be shown using an icon: > for short message and V for long message. Note that the table header is shown for illustration purposes, it will not be part of the final table.

Output-window-short.jpg

If a user clicks on a message, the row will expand and the whole information will be shown.

Output-window-long.jpg

The user can filter message by clicking on the Filter drop down menu. Choosing one message type will show all messages of that type and higher. So choosing Warning shows Warnings and Errors but does not show Debug messages.