[Rod Senra]:
Under some linux distros (I'm positive for some Mdk releases), Mozilla is compiled dumping a lot of info to stdout/stderr. Since one of the goals of webbrowser is to give the end-user a stress-free experience, there goes the mentioned nullification <wink>.
[Oleg Broytmann]:
I see the point. Still I don't know what is worse and more stressful to hide errors or to show errors. MandrakeZilla spits too much to stdout/err? That's certainly a problem. Should we "fix" it and hide from the user? I don't think so.
That is undoubtly a good argument. In general, if the end user could fix or report a problem based on a stdout/stderror message, I couln't agree more on keeping them flowing. However, there are two other issues: 1) If a *graphical* application dumps messages to the console, that might be disruptive to other console applications. IMVHO, a log file should be used instead. (strong argument) 2) If a dummy user sees a warning or info message in stdout/stdin that is not necessarily critical, it might interpret it wrongly as a error message and generate a false bug report. (weak argument) In the case of webbrowser.py, since detection process might face a diverse plethora of browsers (even unknown if defined by environment variables), we cannot predict if 1) or 2) will ever happen. Therefore, my -1 vote in my previous reply. But I do see your point <wink>. Has this same issue been dealt in another stdlib module ? best regards, Rod Senra