> It'd really hard for fred to die (the only case I know being internal > JVM errors) without catching the exception and at least using its > built-in exception handler. I'd give the developers some credit and > try parsing logs.
It's actually easier to just probe the ports; plus it will always work - this includes JVM errors and unhandled exceptions. We've had these before, remember. I do give the developers credit, lots of it in fact because freenet is clearly a powerful and well-design system. But I tend to design everything defensively. With a background in telecoms and embedded devices it's understandable why! > This could be done as well, but I think much better info can be had > from the logs. Although... One could execute the FCP command to get > info from the node, and use that info for some sort of (very-) mini > status. True, but ... maybe later. Or if someone else wants to augment freenet.exe on windows, they could look into that. All I need is essentially a visual cue to say, yes the web interface is running, or no the web interface is not running. Yes I can connect to the FNP port, or no I can't. Any sort of FCP transaction is bigger than I need and doesn't catch situations (should they ever arise, and I hope not but I tend to design defensively) such as fred thinking the web interface is ok but user-mode software is unable to connect to it. I hope you can see my viewpoint here. Maybe some things are trivially obvious in certain circles but the majority Windows users generally don't care about 'status reports' - they want to know whether it's supposed to be working or not. Inquisitive users will then try to find out 'why'. UI guideline: don't present the user with too much information when it is not required. Consider ICQ on Windows. The icon provides visual cues for connection mode, connection success, online status etc. The icon does not say 'yeh, well, I tried to connect but the server said '0x7a' and this means the local ICQ client is too old and is also behind an incorrectly configured firewall' - the icon says 'Connection failed'. If the user wants more information, they read the ICQ connection logs which are available from the ICQ client app. It's just the done thing for Win apps. The logfile is always available, and it's just a click away from the freenet toolbar icon. The icon status is a no-click visual indicator of configuration success and runtime progress. It's impossible to display a 'mini-status' in a 16x16 icon. The underlying software *could* parse the logs but when it's easier not to and there's no immediate benefits, I find it hard to see the point. Plus I only have a modest amount of free time to work on freenet software. d _______________________________________________ support mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hawk.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/support
