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Re: User-friendly message

From: Branden Robinson <branden_at_deadbeast.net>
Date: 2003-06-25 10:56:16 CEST

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 06:16:55PM -0700, Steven Brown wrote:
> > From: Branko Cibej [mailto:brane@xbc.nu]
>
> > I'm sooo tired of people complaining about "confusing" error messages
> > that are described in the documentation. RTFM already.
>
> In defense, the first time I saw Subversion report an error I thought
> it was probably some sort of internal uncaught exception / bug from
> the way it looked. That there're enough people complaining they are
> "confusing" for you to become tired of hearing it might mean
> something. :)

I must concur. I feel the same way about Subversion's error messages.
But I don't raise a stink about it because, hey, it's still alpha.

I hereby grant the Subversion developers a nag token. If the
newbie-friendly error message situation hasn't been addressed by the
time Subversion is frozen enough for 1.0 that error messages aren't
likely to change further, feel free to nag me to contribute on this
front. I believe I have two qualifications for this job:
        1) I have a nitpicky, lawyerly mind
        2) I don't understand much about Subversion internals at all, so
           I am a member of the audience that the error messages (part
           of them, anyway) should be addressing.

I have no objection at all to svn errors having some sort of expert
information trailing the newbie message. I feel error messages need to
serve both audiences adequately. Making them useless for the svn
developers isn't going to help anyone.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson            |       "Why do we have to hide from the
Free Software Developer        |        police, Daddy?"
branden@deadbeast.net          |       "Because we use vi, son.  They use
http://deadbeast.net/~branden/ |        emacs."

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Received on Wed Jun 25 10:57:07 2003

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