sprog-users

[sprog-users] Standard Error Question

[Paul H. <pha...@ya...>]

Grant,
First - thanks for all the great work on Sprog. I've
started to see a number of uses for this tool. I was
playing around last night on our test site at work,
using ReadURL and TextWindow, when I ran into a page
that appeared not to produce anything as output.

I run Fedora Core 3, and had added a launcher on my
panel (counts as a Sprog endorsement, BTW) and that
was how I started it up. So, I then popped open a
shell and ran it from the command line. When I set up
the same gears, and ran it, there was a 403 message in
the shell window. Turns out that was correct for what
we had on the test site at the time, but it raised the
question of where should standard error go?

Sometimes a Sprog user might want that as part of the
stream they are processing, and sometimes not. Any
plans to add a Tee, in addition to the gears? I am
sure that is no small feat, but I curious if this is
something considered in your design roadmap?

Thanks,
Paul Hamingson

Re: [sprog-users] Standard Error Question

[Grant M. <gr...@mc...>]

On Fri, 2005-07-08 at 09:56 -0700, Paul Hamingson wrote:
> Turns out that was correct for what
> we had on the test site at the time, but it raised the
> question of where should standard error go?

Yes, there are a couple of known problems here.  The first is 
that the Retrieve URL gear is not exactly robust.  Improved
functionality and error handling are on the todo list.  I'd 
envisage that in the case you encountered, a pop-up alert
would be displayed and the machine would stop.

The second problem is as you've seen STDERR isn't visible to 
the user.  I plan to allow the framework to capture STDERR and 
display it in a separate window - similar to the Javascript
console in Firefox.  The user will be able to choose to have 
that window pop up when necessary or stay hidden unless 
specifically turned on.

> Sometimes a Sprog user might want that as part of the
> stream they are processing, and sometimes not. 

In the case of a machine that uses an external command, you 
can always append 2>&1 to the command if you do want the error 
messages mixed in with the data.

> Any plans to add a Tee, in addition to the gears? 

Yes eventually, but there are a number of higher priorities on
the list.

Thanks for you feedback.

Cheers
Grant