[Openmcl-devel] Visual Bugs in the IDE

[Ron Garret]

On May 20, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Gary Byers wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 20 May 2009, John McAleely wrote:
>
>>>> I don't see this bug in 1.3-dev-r12100M-trunk  DarwinX8632 or
>>>> DarwinX8664.
>>>
>>> I'll be darned, it does seem to have been fixed.  Now *that* is good
>>> customer service!
>>>
>>> rg
>>
>> Yup!  Thank you! I also like the new look of the alt-console  
>> window :-)
>>
>> Is there a reason why the text in it is red, and not black like every
>> other window?
>
> Because it's not like every other window ?
>
> AltConsole is a (small) separate application; it's supposed to provide
> a primitive terminal-like interface to GUI applications that don't
> ordinarily have such an interface.  If its window appears, there's
> a good chance that that's because of something anomalous and that
> something probably requires user or developer attention.
>
> There might be better ways of attracting that attention than to
> use red text on a white background, but trying to "blend in" isn't
> really the point here ...

FWIW, simply appearing as the front window is enough to get my  
attention.  The red text doesn't really add any value for me in this  
regard.  Also, I think AltConsole will very likely prove to be more  
generally useful than just indicating anomalies.  Alexander  
Repenning's LUI code, for example, already uses it for routine  
diagnostic output from interactive UI controls.

rg