LEGO wrote:
** (ethereal:26525): WARNING **: mate: could not load 'config.mate'
This poses a question, how should mate report to the user the fact
that it did not load its configuration? Is a g_warning OK, should it
remain silent and just don't work?
g_warning isn't the right thing to use for any problem you want the user
to do something about ("do something about" includes "complain to the
system administrator" or "complain to whoever installed Ethereal on the
machine" or even "report a bug to the Ethereal developers"), as there's
no guarantee they'll see the problem.
If there's a default configuration file which should always be present
and readable, it should report the problem to the user when it starts up.
If only users who are using mate need to have a configuration file, it
should be silent about the problem until they try to use it; there's no
point in bothering the user about it if they're not using mate. It
should, however, report the problem.
A failure to open a file in a plugin should be reported with the
report_open_failure() routine declared in epan/epan.h - that'll put up
an alert box in Ethereal and print a message in Tethereal. There are
also report_read_failure() routines to report I/O errors when reading a
file (code should check for read errors as well), and for errors in, for
example, the contents of the file, report_failure() should be used.
