Notification Area issues

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openBrain
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by openBrain »

uwestoehr wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:21 pm - either add an option "don't show warnings" that is on by default
Disagree on this. Warnings are meant to be useful to users. If they aren't, action shall be taken but hiding the dust under the carpet is not an option.
- or deactivate intrusive notifications by default 8so that experts can enable them
Isn't that purpose of abdullah's proposal to get rid of intrusive notifications? :?
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by uwestoehr »

openBrain wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:46 am Disagree on this. Warnings are meant to be useful to users.
Did you read my "rant":
viewtopic.php?p=669233#p669233
and this post?:
viewtopic.php?p=669218#p669218

We also had this debate before FC 0.20 and I just want to get the same as we do in FC 0.20.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by uwestoehr »

abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 6:50 am This modification I have in mind. I will add two checkboxes to preferences:
x show warnings
x show errors
Thanks.
abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 6:50 am With respect to the default settings, I am listening to your position and that of chrisb. I accept you have your use case, but I am not convinced that your use case should be the default.
But this is already the case in FC 0.20. So why do you want to revert this?
I think I made clear how real-life goes. When you work daily with FC, you get a lot of warnings, even I as developer don't understand (Qt internals and the like). You break the real-life workflow by issuing them by default.
Can you please give me an argument why an average user should by default see ALL warnings, no matter of from Qt, or because a dev in past did not care much about warnings, left debug output warnings etc.?
Also, FC 0.20 is now in the market for almost 9 months. Do we have any complaint yet? No.

And again, I have a problem that we force everybody to get a FreeCAD master. We have preferences options for those who want to see more info and not the other way round to first be confronted with all internals while learning a software.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by abdullah »

uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:28 am But this is already the case in FC 0.20. So why do you want to revert this?
I am not sure I am reverting it as you say.

Previously the report window was jumping on errors/warnings. The default was changed so that it does not jump. This jumping was reasonably understood as intrusive. My guess is that it was decided to avoid this intrusiveness even if the user would miss the warnings.

Now there is a framework that is non-intrusive. This means that intrusiveness is no longer an issue.
uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:28 am I think I made clear how real-life goes. When you wok daily with FC, you get a lot of warnings, even I as developer don't understand (Qt internals and the like). You break the real-life workflow by issuing them by default.
I understood and acknowledge your real-life reality. Not to mention myself, I think you have also understood Chrisb's good example of the gearbox too. There are different realities, and, as it is often in life, your reality and that of others may be different.

As I said, we must have a default. It has been acknowledged that warnings are relevant for users which want to ensure to produce good models. Faced with the choice to ignore a warning or be unaware of it, the least damage is to actively ignore it.
uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:28 am Can you please give me an argument why an average user should by default see ALL warnings, no matter of from Qt, or because a dev in past did not care much about warnings, left debug out warnings etc.?
I have said several times already that Qt warnings should not be there. This is however a matter of cleaning up the code of unnecessary warnings. However, I cannot be convinced by an argument that because some warnings are irrelevant and should be removed, we should by default remove all warnings.
uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:28 am Also, FC 0.20 is now in the market for almost 9 months. Do we have any complaint yet? No.
This is a self-serving argument. It is like saying that the colour of a wall is the right one because no blind person complained about it.
uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:28 am And again, I have a problem that we force everybody to get a FreeCAD master. We have preferences options for those who want to see more info and not the other way round to first be confronted with all internals while learning a software.
A default forces people unless preferences are changed, no matter which default is taken. That preference should be to see more info rather than less is a personal opinion rather than an absolute truth. No user should be confronted by the internals of the software, if the warnings are appropriate (so yes, we need to remove inappropriate ones). No user should miss important information because we do not currently have a list of curated warnings.

Those are the reasons why I diverge in opinion. However, if there is strong support for your stance, I will make the default as you want. But I think it is a loss for FreeCAD.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by openBrain »

uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:21 am Did you read my "rant":
viewtopic.php?p=669233#p669233
More or less. Using a dev version in a production environment is well ... at your own risks.
This post is fallacious. It mixes Qt warnings and application warnings.
Qt warnings: we all agree users should not see them
Application warnings: they're meant to be useful to user. If they're not, we have to improve this. Hiding them is probably not a good option. Dev version is there to have user feedback.
We also had this debate before FC 0.20 and I just want to get the same as we do in FC 0.20.
abdullah implemented non intrusive notifications. This is enough to re-open the debate.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by uwestoehr »

abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:56 am I am not sure I am reverting it as you say.
You do: on every warning the user gets a popup. In FC 0.19 every user got the report view panel popping up. In FC 0.20 he gets no popup on a warning. In FC 1.0/0.21 he will again get a popup, this time the notification box.
abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:56 am Chrisb's good example of the gearbox too. There are different realities, and, as it is often in life, your reality and that of others may be different.
This is not a good example. The default must cover the majority of cases, not every special one. A popup for _every_ warning is a no-go for any kind of application in an enterprise: often untranslated, many users are non-natives or don't know the special English words used or have not the CAD background to understand.

Please consider why people founded e.g. the OpenToolchain foundation (non-profit, I am not part of it or a founder). They invest their spare time to make FC a proper tool for toolchains for small enterprises (especially in countries with a low economy where enterprises cannot afford a payed CAD). They could convince the EU to sponsor e.g. my recent FEM development, so also the EU officers share the opinion that FC should be improved to make it a proper tool.
The goal here is to move FC from a "focus for hobbyists and devs to "just users". This is not my wording, but I think that describes it well.

And here we are, I think Chris works at a university, I work in a company. I have FC users working with my models or sending me their models to print from 3 different countries, different levels of knowledge and education. Take for example the "objects go out of scope" warning. This assumes everybody understands English, which is not the case. Then those who understand but are non-natives don't know what this sentence could mean, in the sense of the wording. Even I had first to consult a dictionary about the word "scope" (but nevertheless did not understood it for months).
The "normal" guys will ignore such a message but tell me that it annoys them (happened in FC 0.19), the Ph.D users will try to understand, invest time by googling around etc.(happened in FC 0.19 too) But an hour work time of a Ph.D. guy costs you about 60 € or more. In fact these persons invest an extra hour for a warning that they should ignore because their task is to get a working model.
abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:56 am I have said several times already that Qt warnings should not be there. This is however a matter of cleaning up the code of unnecessary warnings. However, I cannot be convinced by an argument that because some warnings are irrelevant and should be removed, we should by default remove all warnings.
OK, but this is exactly the point where I have a different opinion for the reasons given above and in previous posts. We tried to cleanup the warnings for years now but there are still a lot of irrelevant ones. But we also issue untranslated warnings that only natives with technical background can directly understand. Unless we are sure that we only output relevant warnings with well-understandable wording and translates we can by default output them as popup. But interested users can get them either by setting a notification preferences option or by simply having the reports panel up.
abdullah wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:56 am
uwestoehr wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 11:28 am Also, FC 0.20 is now in the market for almost 9 months. Do we have any complaint yet? No.
This is a self-serving argument. It is like saying that the colour of a wall is the right one because no blind person complained about it.
Speaking in your words: we had another color and got complaints, now we changed it and got no complaints, so the new color fits better. And our users are not "blind" but see well, otherwise they would not have been complained.

Inviting @sliptonic to the discussion who recently founded a company for FC.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by openBrain »

uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm The default must cover the majority of cases.
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by abdullah »

uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm You do: on every warning the user gets a popup.
No, I do not, for the report view does not jump intrusively on the window.

It is a matter of perspective.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm This is not a good example. The default must cover the majority of cases, not every special one. A popup for _every_ warning is a no-go for any kind of application in an enterprise:
That you do not like the example does not make it a bad example.

We should have the warnings we should have. We should invest time to curate them, rather than procrastinate.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm often untranslated, many users are non-natives or don't know the special English words used or have not the CAD background to understand.
This stops being a problem, because now we can translate any message, no matter where in the source code, even in places where we do not want a dependency on QT. Example:

Code: Select all

Base::Console().Critical(this->getFullName(),QT_TRANSLATE_NOOP("Notifications","Parabolas were migrated. Migrated files won't open in previous versions of FreeCAD!!\n"));
An attempt is made by NotificationArea to translate any message arriving to it, except for a TranslatedNotification, which as the name says, it is already translated.

Adding the macro is also an opportunity to review whether we need the warning, or even, could be, we need yet another category of messages (which I do not rule out).
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm Please consider why people founded e.g. the OpenToolchain foundation (non-profit, I am not part of it or a founder). They invest their spare time to make FC a proper tool for toolchains for small enterprises (especially in countries with a low economy where enterprises cannot afford a payed CAD). They could convince the EU to sponsor e.g. my recent FEM development, so also the EU officers share the opinion that FC should be improved to make it a proper tool. The goal here is to move FC from a "focus for hobbyists and devs to "just users". This is not my wording, but I think that describes it well.
You and me, we invest our spare time for free into making FC a proper tool. With higher or lower success, I have been doing this for a couple of years.

You are actually arguing that a software that does not warn its users on potential problems is better enterprise oriented, and that only hobbyists care about warnings. Perhaps that the UE only sponsors software that does not show warnings. I am looking where the hidden camera is.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm And here we are, I think Chris works at a university, I work in a company. I have FC users working with my models or sending me their models to print from 3 different countries, different levels of knowledge and education.
You starting assumption is that despite warnings everything works well. If that is true, we do not need those warnings.

You appear to argue that higher educated people love seeing meaningless warnings on their screens. I must not be educated enough, because I do not appreciate seeing them. Perhaps Chris can confirm he enjoys staring at them.

What would happen if there were a warning indicating that an input model may be in inches instead of millimeters (please to check)? Should we bury this warning or show it to the user? Perhaps the developers of the software used for the Hubble telescope, or in input specs to a certain mars mission also thought warnings should be buried... I think you know how those two stories ended up.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm Take for example the "objects go out of scope" warning. This assumes everybody understands English, which is not the case. Then those who understand but are non-natives don't know what this sentence could mean, in the sense of the wording. Even I had first to consult a dictionary about the word "scope" (but nevertheless did not understood it for months).
I can agree with you.

First we need to understand what it means and why it is there. What are the consequences. Then, if it stays, we should reword it. We should also use the macro to provide translations.

We need to handle these situations, rather to ignore them.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm OK, but this is exactly the point where I have a different opinion for the reasons given above and in previous posts. We tried to cleanup the warnings for years now but there are still a lot of irrelevant ones.
Which means we need to try harder. Ignoring them is not going to make them go.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm But interested users can get them either by setting a notification preferences option or by simply having the reports panel up.
What I do not know yet is if we need another category of message or not. This we have to see. I have added the translations and the critical messages on this iteration. These have a very specific scope. It may be that we need two category of warnings. For getting to know this, we need to identify which warnings we have that are not meaningful and see if they can become logs.

This is now just the start of a journey that we need to walk.
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm Speaking in your words: we had another color and got complaints, now we changed it and got no complaints, so the new color fits better. And our users are not "blind" but see well, otherwise they would not have been complained.
Not really my words. You just took it out of context.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by chrisb »

abdullah wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:20 pm
uwestoehr wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:02 pm And here we are, I think Chris works at a university, I work in a company. I have FC users working with my models or sending me their models to print from 3 different countries, different levels of knowledge and education.
You starting assumption is that despite warnings everything works well. If that is true, we do not need those warnings.

You appear to argue that higher educated people love seeing meaningless warnings on their screens. I must not be educated enough, because I do not appreciate seeing them. Perhaps Chris can confirm he enjoys staring at them.
Of course not! It is ridiculous to say that warnings should be shown to experts only. In the opposite. I dare to say that I have in some fields of modeling quite some expertise. And there I know exactly what would cause warning and I avoid it right away, no need to show them. To be concrete: I never see any out of scope warnings in my models.
The warnings should be there to help the users, new or old. And if they don't fulfil that purpose, they must be improved. If it is wrong to show them at all, they must be removed.

Uwe, please dont carry your job in front of you like a monstrance trying to chase us away like vampires.
I am not only a scientist with a bad haircut in an ivory tower, I'm also working for a company and in various projects. I know both sides, and I must say that this is getting from both of these sides more and more absurd. We have a forum member here, who worked as a Pro/E trainer. When a company bought a license the company was obliged to buy a two weeks course as well, and after a certain time another week.
So the first thing to do, if you want to use FreeCAD in a professional environment, is to act professionally. Tell your boss that your student needs a fortnight of training, and if it's a good training, then he knows very well what the out of scope warnings mean, why and how to avoid it and other dos and donts.
We explain it every week here - for free!

Concerning the wording you may be right; the notion of "scope" is very well known in computer science, but perhaps not outside; I don't know, the native speakers should take care of that.

You say that you didn't have any complaints, well that's because you are not very busy in the forum. Otherwise you would very well know that we regularly see questions where the answer starts with asking back for what the report view shows.
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Re: Notification Area issues

Post by uwestoehr »

abdullah wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:20 pm You starting assumption is that despite warnings everything works well. If that is true, we do not need those warnings.
A warning is not an error. Again, when you have to e.g. printing a part, there is no reason to see a warning that does not hinder your work. The part can be printed, fine, job done, next job can be started.
It is a no-go to output each an every warning no matter how relevant it might be to _every_ user.

If there is a severe issue, then show it the user, otherwise leave it to the experts or interested users.

chrisb wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 9:59 pm Of course not! It is ridiculous to say that warnings should be shown to experts only. ...
The warnings should be there to help the users, new or old. And if they don't fulfil that purpose, they must be improved. If it is wrong to show them at all, they must be removed.
I already understood that you have a diametral opinion.
At the university I had time to carefully check things, time to read in, to understand etc.
The industry is different. And I speak here not about big companies. Every small enterprise with e.g. just 10 persons has to fulfill tasks in a short time. Time is money and in my case people get money to work with FreeCAD. When they need longer because their attention is raised to some irrelevant warnings, this costs money, and especially small enterprises don't have this money.

I think everybody who has to deliver daily knows what I am speaking about.

A side discussion with @openBrain showed that there is a misunderstanding: Of course we use only stable releases in production. It is fine with me to output all warnings in development/weekly builds. But for the next stable release not.
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