More reasonable error messages for account errors

asked 2015-07-28 09:45:01 +0200

ExTechOp gravatar image

updated 2015-07-30 11:25:40 +0200

Don't you hate it that all the feedback you get for your xmpp etc. chat account authentication is that a little green light in the user interface either stubbornly stays off or finally comes on? I'm sure the operating system can't be so tight on resources that we couldn't get some kind of a more resonable error messages, like "internet connection not available", "unable to resolve host name xxx", "unable to connect to server xxx port yyy", "authentication failed for account zzz on server xxx". And I'm not even talking about the mysterious "Tili on päivitettävä" ("Account must be updated") message that you see only after reboots.

Yes, you can use a debugger to see what's going on, but this requires some rather specialized knowledge of the protocols involved, and SSL makes things of course more difficult.

There seem to be many "can't get xmpp working" and similar discussion chains here in Together that would certainly benefit from proper error feedback.

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Comments

Hi @ExTechOp, and welcome to TJC. Could you retag this question with some relevant tags? Tags help Jolla sailors to organize and address the issues

simo ( 2015-07-28 14:38:53 +0200 )edit

The "tag selector" gives me only four possible tags, and I didn't want to go inventing new ones – I only now realized this may be due to adblocking software. I really don't know what tags would be applicable since I have no idea what the "usual" ones are.

ExTechOp ( 2015-07-28 15:36:47 +0200 )edit

you don't actually need to use the selector, and yes, it doesn't work at it should. But you can just start writing a tag and the suggested ones will appear to select from

simo ( 2015-07-28 15:38:36 +0200 )edit

@ExTechOp yes, better (and more verbose) error reporting is something we know needs effort - not just for account creation, but also synchronisation and messaging issues. It requires a bit of thought, though, because often there is no UI application which has access to the error data, due to the process-separation in Sailfish (eg, Settings app doesn't display errors from Telepathy). Thus, the appropriate data either needs to be exposed and consumed (pub/sub style) or pushed (notification banner style), and both of those approaches need careful thought and design intent. Currently, there are other things which are higher on our priority list, but that may change if enough people vote on this issue :-)

TL;DR: we know, but fixing is non-trivial and currently consider it lower priority than other issues. Upvote this issue if you would like it to get a higher priority.

chris.adams ( 2015-07-29 09:31:48 +0200 )edit

Added hopefully relevant tags. Chris, thanks for your input. I'll just see how many people feel this is an important issue, please upvote if you think so!

ExTechOp ( 2015-07-30 11:27:41 +0200 )edit