Better errors
A typical situation when you do something wrong in Blender is that you get prompted with something like this:
For most earth population these lines mean nothing and they have no idea where to start looking for answers. The signal these lines give for them is "Blender is broken." So I suggest that in Blender there would be a system that maps all the errors (I don't know how would that happen) and then all add-on makers would update their add-ons with a text file that includes the possible error codes from their add-on and add something with a real human language to each error.
The prompt that happens would be updated with OK button and "additional info" that would include the python error info, so people who understand something about those can use that info to debug it if they want to.
7 Comments
The problem here, as Craig has pointed out, is that it's difficult to capture all of the possible errors... especially if it's an actual bug in the code and not something that the user has done wrong. If you're seeing an error like this from an add-on, it's an indication that there's a problem with the add-on itself, not something that you as a user are doing. Most add-on developers can structure their code to anticipate some user behavior and try to catch problems before these kinds of errors pop up.
TL;DR getting an error like this is an indicator that you need to talk to the developer and get the code fixed so the error never appears at all. We don't need better error messages, we need better add-ons. :)
@Jason van Gumster: It was one example. "Error like this", it was the first possible error I could get from Blender to get an example. The error and the add-on happened to be the first ones which I was testing at the time.
So the code is a nuance what comes to the idea. People should not look at the python part of this and think "ah, I know what's wrong." As a developer, you might already know it, but it's not the point of this thread.
If we happened to have like... Let's say 10 000 different errors. We should have at least 10 different typical errors category to start with. Just something to have people the feeling of: "Oh, I'm safe. Blender is not broken, I know what to start doing to fix this myself because it says..." Now they just have for them, the random text and no info to know what they should start doing with it. (I this normal? Is Blender broken? Should I do some report of this? Where? AM I JUST STUPID USER, because I get this?)
If it's an unknown type of error, it could possibly print for example: "Random tree generator add-on had an unknown error, please file a bug report with this link."
The link could copy the code automatically for the user and lead them to the correct add-on thread at the Blender bug tracker. Or if the add-on creator has an email address or something similar, he could add that to the system to get their errors there. This is how Windows error reports work. It sends the error code to the developers and the user can just send it to them without thinking how stupid or smart they are. I know I didn't say this in my first message, but this is how they work.
By that way, everything could be little more organized when the users could feel a little bit more secure to make a report and the developers could have the bug reports to the correct place.
I'm not afraid anymore to file bug reports, nor ask stupid questions. I have already lost my face here many times. Somebody has to be "that guy". but I think/hope it can give fresh ideas to people from the perspective of a normal low-level user. Not everybody is "that guy".
I don’t know why this is being downvoted. Better errors are long overdue in Blender. At least a real popup that you can click on and read and that doesn’t disappear when you click it. Even small errors like the one in your example make it look like something went horribly wrong with the current errors. I understand code, but I still think it’s horrifying and a bad user experience. It just looks hacky and unprofessional.
@Craig Jones:
It is true that it’s not the responsibility of the Blender devs to fix addons with bad codes, however for the user it would be much better to have an error just saying "plugin xy encountered an error" (in this case) than this cryptic popup.
It seems like you, as well as other here, are thinking too much like a developer. It doesn’t matter what the error in the examples say exactly – imagine it only saying a Lorem Ipsum or something. The post is about how the popup looks and how it makes it hard to deal with the error. For a developer, no problem, a developer probably runs blender from the console anyway, where all the errors are.
But as a user, you can’t even copy the error to google it and find out more (or file a bug report, which an actual popup could also incentivize a user to do!) easily. And that is bad for the user experience, it’s off-putting and I agree with Artturi Mäntysaari that it looks like Blender is broken for someone who can’t interpret what the error says. (Again, try not to think about the specific error in the example – Blender does have errors on its own, and plugin errors are also important, since they are a very important part of Blender.)
I also don’t see where there would be an additional layer of complexity for a dev if the original error text is in a textbox within a normal popup with a short text for the user. I really don’t see any disadvantages coming from this.
@Fjodor F. Fjodor: it's because Blender is broken when you see this error. Also, it's worth noting that your example of "plugin xy encountered an error" is actually more cryptic than giving the specific error.
That said, you do bring up a good point about providing the ability to cleanly copy and paste the error for developers to see. Technically, this is already possible from the console window or the Info Editor. So perhaps the fix is simply to point users to the Info Editor for more information on the error (e.g. "Something went horribly wrong. Check the Info Editor for more details to send to a developer.")
@Craig Jones: If we need to prompt people with those errors, why the error popup need to be so ugly and not very practical? It disappears when you move the mouse. At least why can't it provide a link to the bug tracker or some other place where you probably could get some additional help for the problem?
@Craig Jones: FWIW, any add-ons that ship with Blender proper are typically reported on the main tracker at developer.blender.org . That said, most (all?) of the add-ons that ship with Blender are vetted for these sort of things, so big fail errors like these shouldn't be seen on those add-ons.
If you do see errors like these on any of the official add-ons, then those bugs definitely should be reported because (as I said), these errors do indicate that part of Blender is broken. It's just that, unlike other programs, when part of Blender is broken (like an add-on), it doesn't necessarily crash the whole application.